Lead in a HUD house?

Question

We just received word last week that our sales contract was signed by hud, so now we just have to wait about a week to get it in the mail and try to set up our closing date. However, on Friday, our real estate agent received an email from somebody who deals with MLS (she didn't give me a lot of detail as to who it was), but she said they deal with the upkeep of the HUD homes and don't really have anything to do with the actual bank. Anyway, they said they would have to send three people out to do bids on how much it would cost for them to stabilize the lead based paint in the house, pick who had the lowest cost, get the work done, have it tested and then pass inspection again. They said this can take one to three months. The thing that confuses me, is that on our LBP inspection report, it is listed as nothing being found and nothing needs to be done! I read over it again last night just to make sure. I also looked at a copy of the LBP addendum that we had to sign and send in with our contract, and the HUD manager's initials are on the line next to "lead based paint found on premises. None of this paint is deteriorating" So is this a paperwork mistake? My agent emailed the lady and told her that the inspection shows no LBP and that she will fax her a copy of it if needed. IF this is true, we are going to be fixing up our house after we close in the middle of winter! I hope we don't have to wait that long. Has anybody ever experienced this? I'm in Ohio if that makes a difference. Also, who ends up paying for all of this?

Answer 1

Depending on age of the house, there's probably lead paint--built 1970s or earlier, yes.  And it used to be thought you could encapsulate it, but now they know that just opening and closing windows can send the lead into the home's air.  So it's to your benefit to have it actually scraped off and removed, but it will take some time.  They do everything in their own time with HUD.  And all your docs are from people who didn't own the house and don't really know about the presence or absence of lead paint.  You can ask if there's anything you can do to speed up the process.

Answer 2

This is weird.  No one from MLS would care about the paint and no one would be contacting your agent about it.   It is not an issue with them.

Your agent needs to contact HUD and get this straightened out.  Only houses built before 79 have a chance of LBP and the odds of it showing up now  are next to nothing.

No work needs to be done and this is confusing because someone from the MLS called.   Are you SURE the house is off of the market?   It sounds like another agent may be stalling to get a bid in.

Answer 3

It sounds like HUD is paying for it.

One of the things i have learned from buying repo's is that i have to offer very low prices.  Most of my offers are rejected. But when i do buy a house at a very low price, i am prepared to wait 3 months for some "silly" lead paint remediation (scraping and painting).  If your house is older than 1978,  it doesn't matter what an inspector found or what was signed in a LBP form.  If HUD insists that it be scraped and painted , it will be.  If you offered $50,000 less when bargaining, then you stay in a motel for the 3 months.  YOu can still smile because you got such a good deal.  But when you pay full price because you were bargaining in good faith, you learn a hard lesson about repo's.  

On my last repo purchase the bank counter offer said they could cancel the sale at any time for any reason ;  but i couldn't.  Who would sign a contract like that!  But i did because the price was so low.  The stove was stolen in a break-in before closing and they would not replace it.

Answer 4

Things like this are not done by e-mail!