In episode 38 of The Real Talk, Raquel Ramirez interviews Manny Pozo, President of BioResponse Restoration, as they dive deep into the world of water, fire, and mold remediation, discussing the importance of indoor air quality and the potential dangers of asbestos. Manny shares valuable insights on how to prevent mold growth, the significance of proper ventilation, and the common mistakes homeowners make that can lead to mold issues.
Tune in for an informative discussion on property restoration and indoor air quality.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:02:54] Asbestos and its Dangers.
[00:04:36] Asbestos in Commercial Properties.
[00:08:23] Mold Issues in New Homes.
[00:13:21] Mold Causing Severe Health Issues.
[00:16:26] Mold and Health Effects.
[00:19:31] Drywall and Mold Prevention.
[00:22:47] Oversized Air Conditioners.
[00:29:52] Duct Maintenance Considerations.
[00:37:39] Mold Prevention Strategies.
[00:39:22] Bathroom Ventilation Solutions
[00:43:20] Dealing with Water and Fire.
[00:45:23] Handling Water Damage Effectively.
[00:48:56] Insurance Challenges in Real Estate.
[00:54:35] Cleaning Up Crime Scenes.
[00:58:55] Overcoming Home Buying Fears.
[01:02:44] Real Estate Inspection Stories.
QUOTES
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Raquel Ramirez
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/featured_properties_intl/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/featuredre
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-ramirez/
Manny Pozo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mannypozo/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manny.pozo.3/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manny-pozo-3900b131/
WEBSITES:
The Real Talk: https://www.therealtalkpodcast.net/
Featured Properties International: https://msha.ke/featuredre
BioResponse Restoration: https://bioresponsecorp.com/
Welcome to The Real Talk. I'm Raquel Ramirez, your host and real estate professional here to bring you insightful conversations, expert advice, and powerful stories about what really goes on in life, love, divorce, and real estate. Are you ready? Let's get real. All right. Welcome to The Real Talk podcast. How are you doing today?
Raquel Ramirez
Good, Raquel. Thank you for having me.
Manny Pozo
Thank you so much, Manny, for being patient with me as we got this recording going today. For those of you tuning in, I'm speaking with Manny Pozo. He is from BioResponse. I'm sorry, BioResponse Respiration, and you are a water, fire, and mold remediation expert. Is that correct? Correct. Correct. All right. Perfect. We're going to talk about a lot of these. Yeah.
Raquel Ramirez
A lot of these things.
SPEAKER_02
Okay. Cool. Cool. So actually let's just write, jump right into it. Tell us what it is that you do and your background, how you got your company started.
Sure. At this point, we're a restoration company. We're in that industry where it really has to do with everything having to do to restore your property after an event. An event could be anything from a flood, a pipe break, a roof leak, a fire. Then we are indoor air quality experts, which is essentially the mold component of this. Recently, in the last two years, we've also added asbestos abatement to the list of services that we do and we are licensed for that as well.
Yes. Wow. Do you see asbestos as often as people used to way back in the day?
You know, it's a common, I guess, myth that there's no asbestos anymore. There is still asbestos and it would be, you know, there's just we don't see as much of the jobs happening because so many jobs have happened. But if your if your property was, you know, pretty much created or built before 1970 something, it's probably got asbestos. But now we've got a little better understanding of what's the worst asbestos, which is friable. It's the stuff that they're doing demo or they're doing remediation, I'm sorry, renovations in your property. Then you have to get it tested, especially if it is a commercial property and or a school, which is heavily, heavily regulated. And then there's other non-fryable, which are these mastics, which again, going back to the myth, there are still products utilizing asbestos, mainly glues and adhesives for flooring. So there's still asbestos out there. It's just not as many jobs of asbestos because so many jobs have been done up until recently.
Interesting. And I remember, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't know much about asbestos, but is that something that if you, I guess, disrupt it, it could release some sort of toxin into the air, kind of like a mold spore?
Yeah. It's not really a mold spore because it's not a living organism. It's actually a mineral. It comes from rocks. The Romans used it for candles because it's really good for, as a fire retardant. That's why a lot of fire retardants, a lot of use it, but it's not a living breathing organism like, like mold. But when it breaks up into small pieces, again, like you said, disturbing it or working with it, it gets into your lungs and actually stays in your lungs and it causes these abrasions in your lungs. So essentially you don't breathe it out. You don't, you don't metabolize it. It just stays in there and does a lot of, a lot of damage over time. That's why asbestos. And again, it was used in so many products before the 70s. And like I said, even up until, you know, before the Roman times, it was being utilized and they were seen as an excellent, excellent product. And then we go to find out the truth about it.
that it could kill you, yes.
Yes, slowly, yes, but it could kill you.
Slowly, sure. So is that something you would test for? I don't know, I'm just curious, right? Because seeing as though I'm in real estate, is that something that you might actually do a separate inspection for? Like if somebody was buying an old house?
It's very rare. I would do it if you had a commercial property, without a doubt. Because most probably of a commercial property, you're going to at some point or already have plans to do some renovations to it. And commercial, they really do ask for it in asbestos abatement surveys when you go get a permit. And at that point now, again, that is a potential issue for you. It's going to raise the cost of you doing renovations in a commercial property. And like I said, if you own a school, anything with children or schools are heavily, heavily regulated. So, of course, if you're in the business of schools for kids, you should definitely be doing asbestos surveys on whatever you're buying. Residential, not as much. Just kind of know if you're buying one of those old, really old homes. Most probably, there's going to be asbestos and where the regulations really dictate is on the OSHA side, not so much on the state side because they really don't even ask for asbestos surveys for any sort of renovations for a home. but know that your employees that are working with you might be risking, you know, potential for asbestos, which could open up litigation or issues down the line to you. So it's just something to know about, but not as important for a home renovation as it is. And again, the people that are most at danger are young people working. And then the people that are working with it as well, because as they're disturbing it, they're potentially breathing in it.
Yeah. So that was going to be my question then. So I guess it's not as serious, let's say, for a homeowner, because once the renovations have already completed and that sort of, I guess, settles, does that not become then a real threat?
Not, not, not really a threat. No, absolutely not.
So it's not like, right. So it's not like you said, like it's mold where it could live somewhere and the spores could.
The fear with mold is that they are working with it, right? Unlicensed, unprofessional I should say. Unlicensed that don't know all the reasons why we do containments and use negative air flows and all these type of things, filters and certain chemicals. they could be potentially disturbing it, putting it into the air and it actually spreads or contaminates the rest of the property. So that you really do, even in a home, should be using a licensed professional. Again, with a home, you should consider it depending on how old the house is. If you know it's a 1950s house and they're going to be disturbing anything like the drywall, the insulation, fire retardant, any sort of fire retardant, the building material, just know that whoever you're hiring is taking that risk and as in any litigious society, there's the small potential, but there is a potential of you being involved in that litigation. If somebody were to sue their bosses, and then it comes back to you. So, again, it's a consideration for all.
Sure. And while there is also the health risk, that's also part of that whole mold situation. I can tell you from experience, not personal, but my sister and her husband had bought a brand new home, a new construction home, large home. Long story short, I can't necessarily name names or talk about the litigation, but they discovered that they had a black mold underneath all five of their bedroom carpet. And we didn't know at first, right? They had just moved in. It had been a couple months. They were already experiencing some issues with the backflow and the plumbing. It was just this mess. And so they weren't necessarily focused on that. They actually decided to change the carpet. in one of the bedrooms to tile. And it's because of that that they noticed. I mean, again, this is a brand new house. It hadn't even unpacked yet. And they had already experienced some issues. And my sister had already ended up in urgent care twice. And her husband, who suffers from asthma, also had a couple of bouts of asthma and they couldn't understand why. And when they, you know, decided to take the carpet up, they discovered that. So my brother-in-law said, you know, that's really weird. This is a brand new house. Why would we have black mold here? Do me a favor. Can you check the other bedrooms? And so as they started to lift the carpet in the other bedrooms, they discovered all that mold. And of course, immediately they said, we need to, you know, block off this AC. You guys need to move the hell up out of here. And they've been living in a condo since. And it's been two and a half years since. Wow.
How long?
Yeah, because there are a lot of other issues, construction defects and stuff. But that specifically was a problem because for health reasons, obviously, they couldn't live there anymore.
Yeah. Well, you mentioned it earlier. They already knew that there was issues with probably cast iron pipes, you know, water situations like that. So that right there. Correct. I mean, did I hear you say that that was one of the issues initially or they didn't know?
Well, no. So it was a brand new house, brand new construction. This was just three years ago. And so it wasn't cast iron piping, but they actually built the plumbing underneath the house. They pitched it in the wrong direction. So everything that they were flushing was just getting stuck and coming back. So they had all this sewer issue. It's a huge problem. So there seems to be foundational issues.
Exactly. There's a foundational issue that they obviously had water moisture at some point in that property, maybe due to that. And if it's sewage water, it's the worst, right? It's microbial. category three, we call category three black water. It's got the highest microbe levels, which obviously are just, you know, fire, if you will, or gas fire for mold growth. And then you've got, you know, carpet, you know, covering it up. You know, you've got the recipe for danger. Probably they have an underlayment there.
It wasn't probably ventilation, right.
Yeah, exactly. So now you've got that growing in there. And this goes to the point, I know, you know, you being a realtor is that, that really everybody should be doing a mold inspection when they buy the house with a licensed mold assessor. And you have to ask your inspector, are you a licensed mold assessor? Because nowadays, all these home inspectors are saying, yeah, I can do the test, but are you a licensed mold inspector? They'll know how to do a cartridge, press five minutes on it, and then take it to the lab. But they won't know what to look for. Situations like that. Maybe if it's easy, I know no home inspector is going to be allowed to tear up the house to try to find things, but at least look in areas that tend to have these issues. What are those areas? Anywhere where there's plumbing. Obviously, anywhere where there's sewage, air conditioners, an air conditioning closet, and just doing a little bit of investigation. I'm sure you've heard this before, that the mold test doesn't really tell you everything because it could be hidden behind the walls. And again, you're not going to be tearing up a house. It's just not feasible. It's not practical. But if you know that the closet is a place where you have AC drain line issues, you have a lot of leaks there. That's the first place you're going to look for if you're looking for mold. Not to mention the AC is the worst place where you can have mold because it can spread it. Right. And an AC job is to dehumidify, filter air and then cool. So we keep humidity low. So it makes it worse. So it actually, yeah, you can you can contaminate the air conditioner. I also own an air conditioning company because I realize a lot of my jobs at an air conditioning component. company called Keep Your Cool. And we consider ourselves indoor air quality experts because we realized that mold, that a lot of air conditioner companies just want to cool your property and don't consider indoor air quality. And then that's when we realized it was so important. So, going back to this example, You know, when you are buying a home, you should be protected. You should look, you know, to at least mitigate knowing that you're not getting into a money bit. And the worst part of it is the story you just said right now. Your health. The worst thing that can happen, especially if you have a problem, even in yourself, where, you know, you don't know how your body's going to react to it. Some people, and I've seen it, I don't know how they live in them. They have a house or they live in a rental property and they have black Could be bad mold, but really bad mold, let's just put it that way.
You could smell it coming down the driveway.
Yes, exactly. No, it's a big old musty mess. And you're walking up to this house and these people are fine. They haven't even complained. It's an owner that says, hey, how can you live like that? Let me check this out. And they're fine. And then you have people. And I've seen this. I saw I met a young lady that if I had to guess her age, I would say 45 to 50 years old. I noticed she had young children. She had been saying that she's she has a lot of health issues. She thinks it's the molders and she moved into this house. Turns out she had black mold, the worst mold. We gave her a proposal, but her insurance had denied her. Her husband didn't want to pay for it, because her husband didn't believe that this was the mold that was causing this issue. And then finally, they decided to do it. I see her three months later, and when I see her, I didn't even recognize her. She was outside the house. She looked 30 years old. Like I said, now it made more sense. She had two children, and now I'm like, OK, now this makes more sense. And I could not believe it. And I go, hey, you look great. You know, she's like, I left this house two months ago. I told my husband I would leave him. I went to a hotel and I left. And obviously he finally got the picture. And this is what she looked like just from leaving this house. Yeah. It turns out they had actually given her a potential diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. You're 30 something years old and you have Parkinson's. And no, it was just she's definitely allergic to mold. Yeah. So that's my point is some people and this is where it gets tough. The husband obviously was not. Right. And so it's like, how could this be molded? I'm fine.
But she's feeling more susceptible.
Yeah. And I mean, she wasn't even at a menopausal age or anything. She just was having a mold allergy.
And listen, it doesn't even have to be an allergy, because I'm sure you know, as well as anybody, that mold can be harmful no matter what. It's going to be hard to get it worse than others. Right. Well, exactly. Like, for example, in this case of my sister and her, her husband, her husband, my brother-in-law is actually asthmatic. He's allergic to a number of things, including like random things like, like cucumber and watermelon, like who's allergic to those things. You know what I mean? Like 99% water. He's allergic to those things. She doesn't have any other types of allergies. And yet she was the one that ended up in urgent care twice within like the span of like two or three weeks. because of her, you know, her, her, what was it that she had? I think it was like, like some spasms. And then she ended up with like this, this respiratory infection. And, and now fast forward, right. That was say two, two and a half years ago, I think almost. she started to have additional health concerns and, you know, nothing crazy, but she started to go to the doctor. She started to get all these diagnoses and they finally figured out that she was having some long-term side effects of mold exposure. And we were like, are you kidding me? We've been out of this already for, you know, so she had to take different precautions now and different measures to address that and kind of detoxify from, you know, whatever mold exposure she had.
So I get this question all the time is how um what is the reason. that mold became an issue. And we grew up there. Yeah. Right. All that type of stuff. And it really was a a combination of things over the years. There was this study that happened in New York of these slumlords in the 80s. And they were finding that that these children were growing up and most of them had asthmatic and they were blamed as some of them on cockroaches. And, you know, what was it about the living conditions? It turns out the Cleveland Clinic found out that actually mold, especially stachybotrys mold, black mold, when children live in those environments, increases tenfold. I don't have the exact number, but dramatically, the increase of asthma, increase of bronchitis, and then even to the point of lung cancer down the line, because they found that at certain ages, I'm sorry, at certain socioeconomic, even lung cancer was more prevalent. That, along with stories that you would hear about, and there was one in particular, the big one was in Texas, a lady that had mold, and the insurance kept denying her, and she didn't have money to move, and she kept living there and just fought the insurance for years. She died. And they awarded, again, don't quote me on the exact number, but, you know, multi millions of dollars to the family. You know, like you remember that story about the coffee and the McDonald's and Lady Gaga. And it's hot. Yes. Well, the reality is she only ended up getting like $800,000 or something like that. In this case, it was the same thing. The jury recommended that and the judge gave a lot less, but still, it was in the millions of dollars. And at that point, that's when insurances realized they were now on the hook for this, unless it's in their policies, right? So the point here is you start to hear all of this stuff. Then people start to realize the health effects, and then obviously there's more studying, there's more tests, and then licenses start coming out. So that's why now we know it's no longer a question. We know mold, certain molds inside at certain levels are bad for us. And we know what causes mold, which is humidity, water, right? Then you add in another factor to this, which is how homes are being built now. I get this all the time. Oh, you don't want to have a contract with a new building? Yeah, I do, actually. Because the new buildings tend to have more issues because they haven't been tested properly. And today's building materials is called value engineering, meaning cheaper stuff. Cheaper, right? The least amount, Clary, they can spend on it. And it's less if you try to put a nail through a brand new drywall, you could probably do it with your hand. Try to do it through those old houses and Coral Gables. Good luck. Coco Plum, you're not doing that. You're, I mean, you need an anchor to put one, you know, just to put up any, any, any size frame on those new drywalls. So it's really densely packed. It's done with cellulose, which interestingly enough, it's also the same product that they use for Parmesan cheese. So it doesn't stick.
Oh yeah. In other words, it's like a baking agent. Yeah.
Yeah, drywall is a biological product. It's wood. So loosely packed wood. So as soon as it gets wet, you can find mold within 48 hours. I get that all the time. It only got wet last week. How could it have mold? Look at it. It's right there. It's right behind your baseboard. So the whole point to this is that when you do have a water event, dry it properly. If it's a lot of water, and it's category three, you know, the dirty water, get a professional, because it will turn into mold. And that's what we're trying to do. That's the secondary damage. That's the true damage that we're worried about, just the water, dry up water. So I know we got on a long... No, this is fantastic.
This is fantastic, actually. I'm actually really aware. I try to be really aware of everything in my house. And I see something that's out of order. I'm like, what happened here? Where are we getting now? Where's that coming from? So I'm kind of that person. And I don't know if this is... If it's silly, if it's not, if it works, if it doesn't, I'm keeping my eye on it. I just started it maybe, I don't know, four months ago. where I started putting these anti-humidity, I think they're called damp-rid bags or something like that. I keep one and I changed them out every month for the last four months in my AC closets because I'm always trying to make sure that anywhere that could potentially be damp is not.
So more important than that, and I think by the way, as long as you're keeping your humidity, I would say ideally under 60% and not letting it get into the 70s. And if it does, it just sits there for a little while and then it comes back, that's fine. But you really wanna control your humidity in your home, especially in Miami and in Florida, where you have high humidity outside. And like I said- What are ways we can do that? What's that?
What are ways that we can do that?
So our air conditioner is so important. Again, I told you I bought I bought an air conditioner company. Shameless plug again, keep your cool. And the reason why is because we just saw so many mistakes going on in the air conditioning business. One mistake besides the one is that, you know, I'll just do the number one mistake is a there is a mold everywhere. Who cares? That's actually air conditioner guy told me that I don't know. It should not be in there. That's number one. So we'll throw that one out. Just the guy that does just that is just completely ignorant. The second one, which I think a lot of us are guilty of. Hey, I need a new air conditioner. My neighbor has the same size house. He's got a five ton. I had a three ton. This is cold. I love sleeping cold. I like that it gets cold quick. Please give me a five ton. And of course, the AC guy is going to go. Absolutely. You want five tons? I'll give you a five tonner. Yeah, absolutely. No problem. Or I've actually seen this, where they upsell the person from a four ton. They sell them a five ton so they can charge them more money. Don't even get permits for the five ton. And they put it in there. They don't adjust the ducts. They don't clean the ducts. They don't do anything different to the ducts system. So now you've got this huge AC that's way too big for this house with no adjustments to the duct and how the air flows. And they now have put it in. So you imagine the speed and the volume of cold air that now gets the vents cold, and then it starts to have the condensation, and then it gets the drywall around that gets wet. Then you start to have this issue. Is that what that is? What's that?
Is that what that is?
That's one of the reasons why you see that up there. Absolutely. Yes. And imagine the other thing is, too, this air conditioner, these duct systems have been collecting dust over all these years. A lot of people don't clean their ducts. I'm not saying you have to clean your ducts, you know, every six months or even every year, but you have to, you should be cleaning your ducts every so often.
That's a good question.
Yeah. And so now you've got this again, this this big powerful AC pushing out all their dust out. So I got all the dust. You've got extra. You got the moisture right now. You start to see where this is going. And then next thing you know, you have a mold issue. And why was it it started with the AC system? It started when I changed the AC, that's right. And you would think that a new AC would be better for mold, and it is, it's just that we have a lot of contractors out there. And again, it's our job as the professionals to sometimes tell the homeowner, hey, bigger is not necessarily better. That's right. And this is not the, I actually, before I owned my air conditioner company, I had a very trusted air conditioning company I worked with. from my B&Is, the B&Is that you visited. And he's the one that told me, why do you want a three-ton? I wanted a four-ton. And I'm like, well, same thing I said earlier. And he goes, no, all you need is a three-ton. I go, no, but I don't want to. And he's the one that made me realize why. Now, he didn't know the indoor air quality aspect of it. He just said, you don't need it. And that's a true professional, one that really looks out for you, even if it's going to tell you the truth. Yeah, exactly. Even if it's not your problem. So that's a big one. And then on the other one on the air conditioner side is these AC. So going back to what you could do, you mentioned the dam getting a float switch, right? So when your AC goes to overflow, it turns off. Oh, what's going on? It's a float switch. Oh, you need to clean out. your AC system. And because most of the time the mold that you find in the AC system is coming from those leaks. Those leaks can be very expensive. Imagine you have wood flooring. Anytime the water gets underneath and you should properly dry it. A lot of people don't properly dry it. Now you've got mold growing in your closet. So that's Besides the maintenance to your AC, having that float switch and even having some redundancies, having a drain pan with a float switch as well. Your AC can help you or kill you when in terms of indoor air quality.
Wow, I'm very keen on making sure that I have actually an alarm on my phone to make sure I change out my filters. I clean out the lines and I keep that little dampened thing in there to make sure that it picks up any leftover moisture. But this thing that you'd said now about buying an AC unit that is too large basically for what you have in terms of your ducts. And that could happen to anyone, even if you don't buy your, like, let's say you don't upgrade your AC system. And, but what I mean by that is maybe you buy a home, right? And you don't know the previous owner. If you bought an old home, like the one I bought, and I think now that you're saying that now it's in my head, of course, I think that one of our AC systems is too large for, cause I remember talking about that. We said somebody came to service our AC system a few years ago and they said, wow, this is a really big unit for your home. And we felt kind of proud about that. We're like, well, I guess that's about the only good thing the previous homeowner did.
Again, you could have one that's really big for your home if the AC. Oh, and there's another. Actually, I forgot to mention another thing that happens is that AC I mentioned earlier, it dehumidifies. The way it dehumidifies is take that AC, that humid air, right? And it gets taken to the system and then dry air comes out, right? So you get an exchange of air. So what happens is your AC system is so awesome. It's badass. It's so cold. It gets me down to 68, 69, so I can sleep real well. But it turns on and it turns off right away. Turns on and then turns off. It's working so fast it doesn't necessarily dehumidify. So it's cooling, but not dehumidifying. And that's another problem with it as well. Generally, you can fix that. with proper, it's called what they call a load or flow checking of your vents and your ducts. So if you add a couple of new ducts in a couple of new places, that'll help vent it out. Again, I'm not the AC expert. I'm learning this. My partner is the AC expert, but we're learning a lot about how ACs affect uh, indoor air quality. And again, you could fix that issue by not changing the AC, but it's going to be an issue with the ducks. You know, the other thing is that so many people, again, you buy this old 1970 house, you know, you've got to buy a new air conditioner because you see it outside. It looks rusty, but it's horrible, but they don't change the ducks.
Yeah.
Again, we all try to save money and try to cut corners. Ducks are extremely important. You should look at it. Now, if you have the old ducks, what are these metal tubes?
Uh huh.
Take a look at them, inspect them. Those are actually better than the fiberglass ones. So you don't necessarily want to change those unless they're rusted and they just are, you know, full of mold. But those, the great thing about those, you can, you know, you can reseal them, you clean them, reseal them. When you clean the fiberglass, if you have somebody that doesn't know what they're doing, they could puncture it and have more issues. Also something that you probably have not heard of is rats or animals. It doesn't have to be just rats. I've seen raccoons go into your attic. They sense water. They sense this condensation that's happening around your vents. They start chewing at it, looking for the water. Now they start making holes throughout your dust. And then you got another moldy mess up in your attic. Plus you got a bunch of animals up there. That's something else that does happen.
You know, but that's very interesting. You said that, you know, people will buy a house and they'll change out the A.C. system, but they won't change out the ducks. I don't think it's I think for the most part it's that they don't even know or really understand that the ducks could, you know, I guess, rot out or, you know, need to be cleaned or they just don't understand that.
When you look in your attic, right, it should be nice and like stout, right? You see these old houses also, the other thing is a lot of times they're just laying on top of the roof. They should be neatly hung inside the attic, right? So they're not all this weight on it. But you start to see them kind of sagging, right? And then what do, again, they see, you know, contractors that don't know what they're doing, that they just start putting mastic around it and they just make some little holes and things like that. But you'll know when you look at it, it just looks sad. Your ducts look sad. When you do a marketing slogan, do your ducts look sad? Because that's what it looks like. It's like, oh, like Porecito, you know.
Porecito, it needs a little pick me up. He needs to retire.
Yeah, he needs to retire.
He needs to go. Flat out needs to go. Yeah. That's really interesting. So, and I've heard both arguments, right? That it's a good idea and it's a bad idea to clean your AC ducts. Where are you on that? I would presume that it depends, right? There's got to be a lawyer.
Yeah, I think I think it depends. I think you should be proactive with it. Again, if somebody tells you change, you know, cleaned every six months, I think that's overkill. I think, you know, and I haven't seen the exact recommendation by Natka and I don't know if there is a timeline, but I think they should be inspected every year to see how they're doing. But, you know, It should be a consideration. That's the point. It should be looked at. It should be investigated. It should be diagnosed, just like you do an air conditioner. Because it's not going to tell you that it's sick, right? An air conditioner, you know, when it fails, it fails. It's not going to tell you that. It's going to be a slow death, if you will. And so you want to investigate it. So like I said, they're retiring, they want to get out. But also, like I said, there might be holes in it, they might not have been properly sealed. So the boot, you see you have the vent, right? That's what we all see there. On the other side. Yeah, the boot is on the other side. It's a hard fiberglass. And then there's the duct that usually... The hose or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The flexible duct that comes out of there. That right there tends to get a lot of moisture. And when you just take off the vent, you'll see it. If it's black, if it's got stuff growing on it, you should consider at least changing the boot. You can seal that. You can encapsulate it and things like that. But if possible, if it gets that bad, you should consider changing it.
So something's going to change... Most people don't. Yeah, but those are things that people, most people don't talk about. And I'll be very honest with you, even in an inspection. I think it's, I mean, I've been doing this over 20 years now. I would say it's been a rare occurrence to talk to an inspector who will get that detailed, say with your HVAC system, which isn't, it's incredible because the HVAC happens to be a major component of the house. So I've never really known, right. And when you call, when you think of calling an AC repairman, excuse me, you'll call them to come because your air is not working and it's hot and you just need to, you know, to turn back on or the condenser, you know, stuff, whatever. And they handle those things, but rarely do they ever get back to you and say, Hey, by the way, your ducks are looking sad or the boots could be replaced, or you've got, you know, maybe a crack or something. They don't necessarily tell you those things.
What's going to be the symptom there is moisture when you see, you know, condensation, but also at this point, Again, it goes back to that secondary damage I mentioned to you when something gets wet in the air in the in the in the air conditioning and the duck example that we're discussing the this the sign the symptom is going to be the mold, because it shouldn't. Yeah, yeah. And so at that point, if it does, you have to take care of the mold, but you also have to realize why did it happen? And that's something with our inspections on mold is, OK, you got mold, but why did it happen? Let's get to the cause of it. It could have been just like what happened to your Sister, it may have been a one time occurrence or maybe something that was happening all the time. An anomaly. Right. The carpet got wet and then it turned into mold. And then now it's kind of a nice place for it to grow. And nobody really took care of it. And it just kind of lived. It became part of the house. In these cases, it's usually gradual. And with everything that we're talking about, it's usually a gradual thing, a little drop, a little a little bit, and then you got moisture, and then there's a little bit of mold then, and I get this all the time too, and we're coming on that time now, well, there's two, there's two, which is the people that leave in the summer that are spending a lot of money to go to Europe, to go to South America, to go around the world, and they're like, I'm gonna save some money at home, I'm gonna turn off my air conditioner. And then the air conditioner gets turned off, and that little bit of mold now goes, and it opens up and it starts spreading. The other people are the usually new, winter, the birds, snowbirds, thank you. The snowbirds that come down and think same thing. We're gone for three months. Let's get out of here. And they turn off the A.C. or put it at 78 or 80, come home and they got mold everywhere. So that's the other thing. Your air conditioner should stay on all the time. Yes. And it's adjusting it because we adjust for comfort and we adjust for humidity. In this case, we're just adjusting for humidity to make sure there's a cycle of air that is humidifying it. Yes. We used to do that a lot. A renewed nest and all that type of stuff will also should give you a warning. Hey, is that 70%? 70% over a certain amount of time, humidity, there's a problem.
Yeah. So we used to do that a lot. Um, I took a hiatus during my real estate career and I worked as a corporate banker managing assets during the great recession. And one of the very first things that was a great time. Um, but one of the things, one of the first things we used to do, we used to take a property back to foreclosure was to secure it obviously. Um, and insure it, but also to make sure that the utilities were still on because we needed to make sure that the air was flowing to prevent the property from decaying. Because we didn't know, of course, how long a property may have been vacant. Sometimes we would take properties over that had been abandoned over God knows how long. And we didn't know how long it was going to take us to turn around and sell it. So we made sure that, obviously, after inspections, that we would keep the property alive. And sometimes, you know, I get sellers who ask me, you say, Hey, should I turn the power off now that we've moved? And, you know, the property's up for sale, let's say, you know, they're closing in two, three weeks. And I always say, do not turn it off. You want to turn the water off? Maybe don't turn off the AC. You got to keep the power on for that reason.
You were obviously a good asset manager. We did a lot of jobs back then for those types of properties. You also obviously had the squatters that didn't take care of you. Oh, those were fun. Yeah, we could talk about that too. But yes, it was very often I would see, you know, and everybody was in dire, all the large institutions, you guys had so many homes.
We were drowning in properties.
And a lot of them fell through the cracks on that.
And we were a small bank. I actually worked for the International Bank of Miami that turned into the Bank of Miami. And then I worked for Gibraltar Private, both of which were small institutions comparatively to the Wells Fargo and Chases of the world. And we were drowning in property. So I can't even imagine. Yeah, it was interesting times. And but yeah, but I learned a lot even on the real estate side, not so much. I mean, of course, on the banking side, but I learned so much about properties in and of themselves during that time, because I would go into these properties sometimes and find probably the worst of the worst in terms of condition because some people were just upset, you know, or they had left and they didn't have anything, you know, they didn't want to get out of the bank to that. They took it out of the bank. Yeah. Or they didn't have any more money to maintain the house. Fine. And so, yeah, there were a lot of issues like that. So it's interesting to know. how the mold can grow. We found obviously a lot of moldy situations. And a lot of that had to do with that, that you would leave a property just unattended, power off, maybe some leaks, just like you said, it just takes one drop of water to build over a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, and no air, no ventilation, and you've got a huge problem in your hands.
Yeah, and it grows and it grows. And of course, like you said, I've seen people go on a two week vacation and come back. But again, that was the mold was already there. They're already having this issue. And that was the last factor that added that just exploded, that it just needed what it needed. That's exactly what they needed was this high humidity for it to really take off. So, you know, that's why it's so important. Like what you do, which is take a look. at the areas and don't let it go, right? Again, that's the answer. Why is that thing starting to make it? And look, a very common one, I get this all the time, I'm also a practical mold remediator, right? Stuff happens. And the very common thing that happens is you shower and you like to take a nice hot shower and the steam goes up to the ceiling and maybe you don't have an extractor or maybe you hate the sound of the extractor because if you hate that, you want to be relaxed in your shower. and you don't put the extractor on, it doesn't extract that hot, that steam, stays at the top, and then eventually these little black dots start to grow, right? It's mold. I've already tested it. It's mold. Sometimes it's really bad mold, but it's just growing at the surface level. It's not getting into the building. Right. So we know where it's coming from. We know the cause. And now what do we do to prevent it? I just told you the exhaust. We have something called engineering controls. We force you. We change the light to not be optional anymore. The extractor has to come on when you turn the light on. Oh, I like that. You forget about it. You don't even hear it anymore. and or put an air duct in there, an actual air duct in there. And then sometimes it can be as simple as as soon as you're done with your shower, you just leave the door open most of the time. You know, a little easier than that. The key is that you watch it, and if it starts to grow, start cleaning it. Now, the other thing is to what type of paint. If you use a more glossy paint, it has a machine to it that kind of protects it as well, usually is a little bit better, but most of the time you can just wipe that off. Again, I go in there, I'm not going to recommend to remove the drywall, remove, go crazy in this house. It's just more of an engineering, you know, control issue. Yeah.
And for the people, you got to, and that's what you said, you, you know, you live in your home. Like for instance, we bought this property, this is a 1960 something house, and we had to redo the two bathrooms. Neither one of the bathrooms had extractors, but one bathroom had a cabana door and the other bathroom had a window. So technically by code, we didn't necessarily need one because there was some form of ventilation. But yeah, right. There was we also had, of course, an AC vent, but the bathrooms were constantly humid and I could not live like that. So we redid them. We actually found out that we had some mold coming through our closet. Long story, but that's not where I'm going with it. And I had two extractors put in there and I bought the biggest, baddest one I could find. And I refuse to let anybody in my house shower if they don't turn that thing on. And in my bathroom, bathroom, even though it's the smaller one of the two, my master bathroom, you know, and you can buy those. The extractors are nice and you spend a few hundred dollars on them, but they're like super high CFMs. They could be really low. You might not even hear it. And I still leave the door open because the humidity builds. It's what you said.
If I can give you a quick pointer just to something to look at, look for, is if you hire somebody to do it, make sure the extractor goes outside. Outside, yes. Not go into your attic. I've actually made these deals.
Then you have another problem.
Beautiful House in Pinecrest, where the two realtors ended up knowing me, and they were like fighting already about who's going to pay for this and how much they're going to pay in credits. They're like, all right, I'll use my guy. Oh, I only use my guy. Turns out I was the same guy. You were the same guy? Which is great, but It was the problem was that they hired somebody to redo the bathroom and they put the extract beautiful $5 million house of pipers and they just had it extracting. So all this steam was going into this very hot area in the attic and there was mold all over the attic. Everywhere, of course. Everywhere. And it was so plainly obvious of what was going on. So again, it's just a quick thing. Hey, where are you going to extract that? And you want to see it extract out. Yes.
Right. And if you can't get it, I remember somebody had mentioned, if you can't get it through your roof because you're out of, I don't know, whatever those stacks are called and you don't want to break through, if you can actually do it through the side, right? If you don't.
Yeah, that's the one that makes more sense. Yeah, absolutely. Just that it suffers.
Yeah, you have to. And I stress that pretty much in every episode that I have, which is to make sure you do your homework and and maybe even get a recommendation from somebody who's already done the work before. Make sure that you interview the professionals that you plan to work with. Not all professionals were created equal. It's unfortunate. All over the place. But you have to be very careful who you hire these days, because like, as you said, look, you could live in a multimillion dollar property and hire the wrong people. And now you have this huge mold issue in your attic. And that's a big deal.
Yeah.
That's a big deal. Good luck cleaning that.
Yeah, no, that was not fun. And again, you see those older prankers house where the attic space was tiny. you know, get rid of all of the drywall of the ceiling to be able to access it. And also the other side of that ceiling had mold all over it. So, you know.
What a disaster. Like you have to empty that house, right? In order to do that.
I want to say it was almost like a $20,000 credit, you know, that person, you know, we had a job, but it was about $20,000. And so luckily, luckily they did have me and it's not to toot my own horn, but that they had to, you know, somebody that they both trusted. And it just so happened that this is legitimate and this is what the cost of it is. But then they had to rebuild. It was a nice bathroom, I imagine. And so they had to rebuild that bathroom. So I had to get rid of it completely. Now, because what they did was they turned one big bathroom into two bathrooms in the middle of the renovation. So they had to each each room had their own bathroom. But since they were throwing it up there, it affected both bathrooms and ceilings.
So they affected both bathrooms.
Yeah, it was it was it was.
If anybody's ever done any work in their house while they lived in it, because that's been my oh, that's such a nightmare.
We've been putting off that for three years. I talk about it every year and then we go to Europe.
The idea sounds, yeah, the idea sounds like- Yeah, it's nice.
And it's not even, yes, the money sucks, but it's the part we're living through it, that's the problem.
Yes, that's the problem. That's the real turnoff. Yeah. So we're talking about all this cleaning, you know, the water, obviously. We haven't actually talked about water and we haven't talked about fire, but we've talked about mold and we even talked about asbestos a little while. I don't know if you want to talk about water and fire at all, or if you want to tell us a little bit about- Yeah, I mean, look, fire is very obvious, all right?
You know, fire, Now, it's really about knowing, you know, is it going to be a complete gut job. And if it is, you know, then you've got pretty much a general contractor, that's the only person you're going to necessarily deal with. General contractors hire us to do the initial part. But the key with fire is that even if it's a smaller kitchen fire, you know, usually that's where they are in the kitchen or electrical fire, just know that if it had that soot, right, that ashes and the soot gets everywhere, including if it goes back to the air conditioner, it goes back into the air conditioner.
If it gets into the air conditioner, change the air conditioner. Oh, my gosh.
The odor will never, ever go away. But There's a whole process, a whole standard by IACRC on how to properly do that. Obviously, we do that. But sometimes it's so bad that it just needs to be completely gutted or obviously condemned. And then in terms of water, I mentioned it earlier, which is the key to water is that you dry it and then you dry it. In some cases, if it's Category 3 and dirty water, you might have to remove the drywall or the wood if it has that because You can dry it, but once the microbial levels are so high, it's really difficult without removing it. So, you know, if we catch regular water or gray water early, 24 to 48 hours, right around there, we start drying it, we could save it. And it has minimal damage, meaning baseboards, a couple holes, and then the equipment will do the work. But if you get one thing out of this, I always say, if you read a book, you get one thing out of a self-help book. So you read it 10 hours reading, and then you get one thing you can apply out of this 20 to 50 minute podcast is that if you wet something, and it's a good amount of water, and it gets into the building structure, dry it. Whether you dry it with a professional, if it's very big, you should dry it with a professional. which means dehumidification and fans. You have this movement and then you put antimicrobial on it. If you do it yourself and it's a small area, just make sure that you're drying it properly and then that you're putting antimicrobial on it afterwards. And then just monitor it as well.
Yeah, make sure you don't get any of those little black spots or any color spots.
Any color. I know the black mold really gets a bad rap and it should, but there is, you know, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of different types and we haven't even investigated all of them.
Yeah, right. That's what I hear. That's what I hear. And all of it is bad. You just you just you don't want it to get to that point. So, yes. So just to kind of echo what you were saying, which is basically if something does get wet, dried immediately, don't leave it there. Don't let it soak till tomorrow. Get to it immediately and monitor it.
That's right.
Yeah. And then and then call a company like you call Manny to find out, you know, if it is something that's enormous. It just reminds me of a story. My brother-in-law, again, left many years ago. We didn't know him back in the day, but he had just bought his new house and he went on vacation. And he came back to find that the water main, for some reason or other, it just, I don't know if it would explode it. I don't remember the details, but he basically found the whole first floor of his property inundated. He walked into like a foot of water. And yeah, it was. Of course, you had to, you know, call the insurance company. And there was this whole process. He managed to practically redo the whole first floor of his his party, got a new kitchen and everything out of it. But it left such an impression that he won't leave even for the weekend without shutting the main water valve.
Wow, that's huge. And most people, even I don't do that.
He recognizes that it might be, but he's like, I'm not doing that twice.
But that's a consideration. Absolutely. You know, absolutely. Is when you're going for long periods of time, you do that. There's also a lot of new technology right now, too, that water. If you live in an area, everything's on Bluetooth now. Yeah, you get an app for everything, give you warnings. There's some buildings and clients of ours, you know, these, these, these buildings that, you know, they've done, they've had million dollar losses, right? Imagine these, these, these, these big high rises. And now, and all those air conditioners, I mentioned air conditioners, air conditioners, and in certain strategic spots on every floor, they have these monitors that'll just ping them and tell them, hey, there's water, there's water. The worst is when you have like what happened to your brother, the water just keeps going. You can catch it in time, and now you can minimize the damage. So there's a lot of technology out there, and you should look into it because it could save you. And then another part too, you just mentioned right now about insurances, I know you know, being in the real estate is the insurance has gone to shit, pardon my language, right? It has gone and you have at the most, in most cases, $10,000 worth of coverage. And $10,000, no matter what you lost. So you mentioned the kitchen, that's not going to cover a kitchen anymore. And where do a lot of our water issues happen? In the kitchen. And you're not going to have enough money. You're going to have our bill to dry it properly. And then you've got to redo your kitchen flooring and everything else that happened. And then the plumbing, you know, that whatever that broke. So you're not going to have a lot of money. In other words, they have put the onus on us, the homeowners and the property owners to sit there and say, hey, this is all you're going to get. And the funny thing is, it costs more money now than it ever has. But that's just the fact of what it is. So we have to protect ourselves. We have to find new technology. We have to be aware. Again, we are now educated enough to know that undried water is going to create mold, which is going to affect your health. Our industries had to adjust to that with the insurances. There was a day where, hey, we had to do what we had to do, and we did it, and we'd send them the bill and wait to get paid. That's awesome. Now we talk to the homeowner, right? How are you going to pay for this? Hey, you have a $10,000 limit. Let's get approvals before we start. Hey, I don't know if this is covered. I can't take this chance. You're going to have to pay me and then try to get reimbursed from the homeowner. So those days are over of getting your kitchen or getting, you know, this is a new opportunity. I'm not going to do my roof because there's probably a hurricane coming. That's not going to cut it anymore.
No, no. The insurance companies have gotten pretty wise about that and probably have gotten off the deep end. But that's an entirely different episode. So you're kind of in this cleaning business, right? At the end of the day, you clean up water spills, you clean up fire hazards, or so let's call it. You clean up molds. How did you get into the cleaning business?
Oh, good question. The name of the company is called BioResponse, Biohazard Response, which is short for Biohazard Response. My partner is a firefighter. We've been in business now 19 years. I'm married to him 19 years, married to my wife 20 years, so I've been married for a long time. But he was a firefighter that was in a job. There was an elderly lady that was on Coumadin blood thinner. She cut herself by accident and the blood was everywhere. And they got called out by the family. They they they luckily saved her life before she lost so much blood. But there was blood everywhere. And as they're taking her to the hospital, the family is like, hey, are you guys going to clean all of this? And they looked at her and they said no. And this is well, then who does that? And all the firefighters looked at each other, and they're like, actually, I have no idea who does that. We don't do it. And so that stayed with them. And two days later, I was the business guy, right? I had an MBA. At that time, I was in medical sales. I had about five failed attempts at trying to start a business. And so that made me automatically a business guy. And I told them, absolutely not. You're crazy. I went to school. I'm not going to be cleaning blood or crime scenes or anything like that. And but it stayed with me. And at that time, I looked at the Internet and I said, hey, look, we can start this business with, you know, 10 grand each. There's really there was only one company in West Palm Beach that was doing it. And so with that, we started the business. And the first three months, we didn't even get a phone call. And then eventually on Thanksgiving, we got our first job, suicide. I had part of our part of our partnership agreements that I'll never clean. I'll never see a dead body. And I'm just the business guy.
Is that in writing?
That was not in writing. That was in here.
You should probably get that in writing.
Yeah, I should. It's been 19 years. I still don't have that in writing. But it's for a good story. And then on Thanksgiving, my partner's like, hey, great news. We finally got our first job. I'm like, oh, awesome. And then he goes, bad news is those three guys that we trained three months ago, they're not answering the phone. I need your help. I'm like, wait a minute. You promised me that I would never have to clean. And here I am. right away having to go clean this suicide. And then, you know, just to make the story more real here, I always thought about the blood. I thought about, you know, the nastiness of seeing that. Again, I knew it was a suicide. We get there to Coconut Grove. There's no cops there. I don't see any cops. I don't see anything. I see these two ladies, women, and they were crying. And then I realized, wait a minute, I never thought about the human side of it. I just thought about what my startup cost was, how much, you know, what's my partnership agreement should be and all these things. I didn't think about the human aspect of it. And as soon as we saw them, it was it was her son that passed away and the brother. And then they go, I go, well, which unit is it was a was an apartment. And she goes, that one right there. I go, OK, great. And as we start to walk over there to take a look, she's like the the police should be here any minute now.
Oh, you can't touch that.
So now I look at my partner and he can read my mind at this point. Wait, there's a dead body inside there.
I told you you needed that in writing.
So now right away, dead body. And yeah, so we waited 20 minutes. The cops show up. They go, just hold on right here. Homicide. They walk over there and then they come. They tell me, come here, come, come, come here. I'm like, here I am walking to go see a person that committed suicide with a gun. And I'm walking over there, but I have to act like the professional, like I've done this before. My partner is obviously a firefighter, and he was a professional. And I just sit at the door, and he goes, ah, standard suicide. Be back in two hours, and we'll get this all cleaned up. We'll get this all ready for you. I'm like, OK, great. Thank you. So yeah, that was our first job. And after that, I did a lot of them. And I'm actually in the process of writing a book of all the stories that Because it's, as we say in Spanish, achievement. That really is the story. It's like all the gossip and stuff that comes along with these stories, but also the story of what you just heard right now, which is a guy you would never have thought that would be doing this, was doing, like caught up in all these scenarios. So, yes.
Wow. It just had a little levity. I just, it reminds me of the scene, you know, when John Wick calls, you know, for a table. He calls for, what is it? He says party of, or table for six or party of six or whatever. And in comes this cleaning crew and they come prepared, man. And I'm like, those are the people I want to come clean my house. Those are the ones I want to get every speck of dirt.
That's exactly what happened, right? He's like, Hey, wait a minute. We can clean up. blood. We can clean up mold. We can clean up asbestos. We can clean up anything. We can do a little water. We can do this. We can do that. And that's exactly what our thinking was on that. Not to mention, again, we were learning a lot about working with insurances, the government side. The governments were asking us, hey, do you guys do this as well?
And then I was just about to say that. Yeah. I mean, did you ever connect with law enforcement or anything like that?
Yeah. I've had a contract for Miami-Dade County for 17 years. So within two years, we already got a cover. We still have that contour. We clean all the police vehicles, transit, Miami-Dade transit, City of Miami, City of Miami Beach, all those vehicles that we clean. I didn't realize that. Yeah, yeah. not to get too into it, but if something happens in a private home, it's on the private homeowners or the property owners, it's their job to find a company. But when it happens on government property, then they do it. And then in some cases, the government will just be like, hey, help this person out, we'll cover it.
Yeah, because they have vendors, right? They have approved vendors and things like that. Yeah. Wow. Well, that's one hell of a story.
Yes. I mean, I could see how that's a natural progression. I'm a good party trick. You send me to a party, give me a couple of drinks and I got stories for days.
That's great. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's I could again, that has a natural progression. That makes absolute sense that you would go and clean something like that. And obviously, what's a little mold after that, you know? No.
And at the same time, I was my career, my I was doing this as a side gig. And at the same time, my my career, my day job, if you will. was turning into medical devices. Then I got a job doing heart valves. So next thing you know, I'm seeing, I went from the guy that didn't like blood and I'm during the day. You're all in it. Yeah. I'm seeing a chest cavity wide open and then heart valve. And then I'm getting a call and trying to close a deal on a, you know, on a double murder suicide, you know, for that night for us to do. So, yes, it was an interesting career.
A little morbid. Yeah. But but it seems it seems to you that you've been successful because you've almost two decades now. So good for you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Good for you. Good for you. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you sharing all of that. I did learn a lot, believe it or not. You know, mold is one of those things that could be a little scary, but if you address it in time, if you keep your eye on it, if you do all the right things.
The other thing I will say, again, as being a real estate professional, is Let's pick your right, you know, like you said earlier, find the right professionals, find the right people to team up with. We can fix it. If it is a true moldy mess, that professional will tell you, hey, I'm really concerned about this. But it is something. It should not stop you from buying a house if there's mold. It really should be something of concern and something that you should get good professional advice on and know what the costs are and what the potential may be down the line. But it really shouldn't stop you from buying a house. Because I've seen that too. I've seen people really walk away from great homes and this crazy economy right now with homes. And they're walking away from a great house for something that could be easily fixed.
But it's about finding that. And I'll give you a last story before we close, which is I was helping this young lady years ago. This is, if I'm not mistaken, this is before the pandemic. Yeah, this is before the pandemic. And she was desperately looking for something. It's like pre and after, it's like BC and AD. Yeah. And she was looking for something very specific, you know, within a certain budget. So it was difficult, right? And she was looking for something in a very small area. So it's not like we could expand and there were opportunities elsewhere. To make a long story short, I said, okay, what can I do to help her find a place in this community? So I wrote a letter to each and every three-bedroom homeowner in that community. And I got a few hits, right? Two people. One of them actually ended up having a phenomenal three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse, gorgeous little place backed up into like a tennis court. I mean, it was the perfect place. It was updated. And I could get it under value for her because I was cutting the guy a deal telling him, I'm trying to get her a place. I'll only charge you half the commission. There was a tenant in place. Actually, this was just Four months of me helping this guy on and on and on. Finally, we get the tenant out. And we get her under contract for like, call it 310, right? And we do the inspection. And the day before the inspection period, she calls me to cancel. And I said, well, just cancel? She's like, yeah, just, I want to cancel. And I said, are you kidding me? We've been looking for a place for a year. We've been dealing with this for four months. This place is fantastic. She says, well, the inspector told me that he found mold in the AC closet. And I said, I said, you know, that's very common here in South Florida. I'm sure that's something that we can address. Maybe we can ask for credit. I mean, there's so many options here. And she got so nervous. She said, well, my kid, he tends to suffer from asthma. And I, I did my research and I called an AC company to ask them to quote me on changing the entire AC system. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And yeah, and it's going to be too expensive. So I just want to cancel. And there was nothing I could say to her to get her to change her mind. She canceled the contract. I turned around and ended up selling that property for $353,000. So obviously the seller was ecstatic. And she never bought a house. She was never able to buy a house. This was like four years ago.
There is a lot of learning in that, right? You know, when your fears control you, then, you know.
She was priced out. She eventually got priced out. And of course she was looking for something too specific. And, you know, the interest rates went up, the prices went up. She got priced down and she never bought a place.
By the way, how much do you think those are worth now?
That particular townhouse is probably worth like 400, below 400.
$100,000 mistake.
Yeah.
Yeah. And she probably would have been able to fix that for $5,000 or less.
Yeah. But she got so scared with this whole, the inspector told her that he had found some mold in the AC closet and that was it. That was enough to set her off.
Mold is also very psychosomatic, right? Once you think it's affecting you and all that. So I see that all the time. Again, that's why I kind of call myself a practical mold remediator. I think I have a practicality to it as well. because I just see people just go off the deep end when they think they've got mold in their home. And I told them that it's been tested. I did everything. I don't find mold anywhere. They're like, I said, look, the good news is you can go now find something else to see what's going on with your health. Because it's not always mold, despite what you read online. It's one of the things on the checkbox that we should be looking at. Before, nobody would talk about that. Now they're talking about it, but it's not the only reason that you may have issues.
Right. No, it was a really it was a sad story because I felt bad for her, but there was nothing. I mean, we could have extended, say, the inspection period to come up with a solution. We could have had a second inspection, maybe a professional come in and test for nothing. She was so scared about it and she decided to back out. And that cost her. Like you said, it was a hundred thousand dollar mistake.
Yeah. Well, sorry to hear that.
Yeah, me too. But anyway, thank you very much again for your time and for all this this information.
Great.
I love this. And I will be reaching out to you. God forbid I ever maybe hopefully you'll never have a need for you because I'm like a hawk looking everywhere.
I'm going to leave you with this. Now you just said that. On the first job, which I told you about, I went to pick up the money from the brother, the son, the brother-in-law of the person that committed suicide. And again, it was Thanksgiving. And he was pissed that he committed suicide on Thanksgiving. Of course. It's very inconvenient. But it's my first job. And I'm just happy that now I'm collecting money. You know, I'm trying to be somber, you know, and the whole thing. And he's telling me all this stuff and all this stuff. And then I go, thank you. He gives me a check. Thank you. If you ever need myself again, please call me again. Like you would at any other job, right? And any other sales job. It's sales all of my life. And it's always like, you know, be nice at the end. And they're like, I hope I never see you again. I'm like, okay, learning lesson, you know, don't ever end the sales call with that.
Yeah, probably not your best move.
But to this day, no matter everything that I do, nobody wants to see me again.
Yeah. Yeah. There are times there are some certain professionals you wish you never had a need for. But if I ever did. Yes. If I ever did. I'm glad to know you. Thank you again very much. Yes. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you again.
All right. Awesome. Thanks a lot. Bye bye. Stay safe.
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