Selling Your Home With Asbestos: 10 Key Facts You Should Know

Virginia Cash Real Estate • February 16, 2024

Asbestos is the term that describes six types of natural minerals: chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, anthophyllite, and actinolite. It’s a substance that was once lauded for its heat resistance, tensile strength, and insulating properties. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s until it was banned in some U.S. products in 1978, asbestos was found in everything from fireproofing to vinyl products to gaskets to cigarette filters. (1) Asbestos can cause lung cancer and other lung conditions like pleural disease.

Economic Indicators Affecting Real Estate

You can find asbestos in insulation around pipes, ducts, walls, floors, roofs, and more. If you suspect that your home has asbestos, you will need to find a way to deal with it when selling it. Below are the ten tips you should know about.

What is Asbestos
Different types of asbestos
Why asbestos is dangerous
Where you can find asbestos in your home
Understand asbestos testing laws
Disclose known asbestos to buyers
Offer a credit for repairs
Offer an abatement
Consider selling the house as-is
Benefits of selling as-is

How to Sell an Asbestos-Infested Home

Don’t worry; you can still sell a home that contains asbestos. While you must reveal its presence in the house, you have numerous alternatives for dealing with it.

Learn about Asbestos Testing Laws

If you’re convinced your home has asbestos, you may get ahead of any buyer’s objections by testing for it yourself. Being proactive provides you with greater bargaining power and guarantees that potential purchasers are aware of it from the start and are not put off later in the process. Even if you suspect asbestos insulation around an old boiler pipe, it can only be positively recognized using a specialist microscope. In some areas, you can save money by purchasing an at-home kit, which costs between $40 and $70.

You collect the samples and send them to an EPA-approved laboratory. However, by disrupting the material, you risk exposing yourself and your family to asbestos. If you live in a state where collecting samples for testing is forbidden, your home inspector can refer you to a specialist.

Disclose the Asbestos and Negotiate

When completing the seller’s disclosure, you are usually required to report any known asbestos in the home. Failure to disclose could subject you to legal action, so it’s always best to be truthful. But don’t lose sleep over the possibility that disclosing will harm your chances of selling. If you’re unsure whether asbestos is present, make it apparent in the seller’s disclosure.

For some buyers, the presence of asbestos in the home is enough to confirm their fears. Asbestos was so widely used as a building material prior to 1980 that most home buyers expect to find some trace of the mineral in an older home. But don’t be surprised if the purchasers request testing before the closure. While you are not compelled to approve their request because it may disrupt the asbestos, they may withdraw from the transaction if you do.

They could even use the possibility of asbestos to gain additional concessions.

Determine Whether You Will Repair or Remove the Asbestos

Even if asbestos is found in your home, you are not compelled by law to do anything about it. While you can avoid buyer concerns or requests for repairs after the house inspection by repairing or abating the asbestos before listing, buyers rarely walk away from a home that has asbestos. Asbestos flooring, siding, and roofing materials can last several lifetimes if maintained properly. However, if it is plainly damaged, you may want to repair or abate the asbestos before listing it.

The removal cost will vary depending on where it is located, how much asbestos is present, and how seriously damaged it is. Asbestos removal from attic insulation can cost up to $15,000, while tile removal costs up to $15 per square foot.

Asbestos Sealing or Coating

Remember that asbestos is only hazardous when it is disturbed. It is sometimes safer and less expensive to hide it rather than have it removed. Because you won’t have to pay for removal, containing the asbestos is often 20% less expensive than removal. Workers seal asbestos by dipping fiberglass fabric in water, which triggers a resin that hardens and forms a permanent cover when the cloth is wrapped around the asbestos.

This is the most commonly used method for encapsulating asbestos around pipes. The contractor may spray it with a high-grade professional sealer to cover it in other spots. Nine times out of ten, you can contain the asbestos instead of removing it.

Abatement

Professionals remove and dispose of asbestos in your home through abatement. It’s a more expensive and time-consuming technique because it necessitates disrupting it, which raises the risk. When asbestos removal occurs, the business usually requests that you, your family, and any pets not be there. It may take up to 48 hours before it is safe to return home.

Inquire whether your abatement contractor’s services include post-abatement air testing. Before beginning, the abatement business seals all vents and shuts down all heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) devices. The room or area of abatement is then sealed off with plastic sheeting. This keeps asbestos fibers from entering other parts of your home.

Provide a Repair or Abatement Credit

In a perfect scenario, you would have plenty of time to repair or remove the asbestos before selling. However, if you are selling to relocate or because you have already purchased another home, time may be of the essence. Or perhaps you simply do not want to cope with the trouble. In this case, you can offer to cut the repair or abatement costs from the total selling price.

Sell As-Is

Managing the asbestos in your home requires a lot of time, work, and money. However, choosing to sell homes to cash home buyers in Virginia Beach allows you to save your money and time. When you sell a house, you don’t have to worry about repairs or open houses. You can sell the house to a “we buy houses cash Norfolk VA” within ten days.

Cash home buyers in Virginia Beach Virginia give you an offer within two days, and once you accept it, you can close the sale within days and move on to the next chapter of your life.