#180 - 06/28/05 07:57 AM
Homeowner says mold make her home uninhabitable
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RemodelingGuy
Super Do It Yourselfer
Registered: 03/02/01
Posts: 914
Loc: Houston, Texas
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BRUNSWICK - Number 6 Magill Ave., the first house on a short dead-end residential street that is quite easy for a passing motorist to miss, is clearly unoccupied. Shrouded in blue tarps hanging limply in the heat, the home is surrounded by a knee-high lawn and silence.
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Stepping inside, the question of why the two-story, single-family home is empty is answered, first by the smell of mold and second by dark growths visible on the walls and on ceiling beams shown by missing tiles.
According to homeowner Kristine Choma, who bought 6 Magill Ave. Feb. 12, 2004, the molds present in her home and on her possessions are Stacchybotris and Aspergillus, the most toxic of molds whose airborne spores are poisonous when inhaled.
Until last year, she shared the home with her daughter, an award-winning athlete, and a seven-pound Pomeranian. Four months ago, an air quality engineer she hired to take samples in her home told her it was contaminated with more airborne Staccybotris spores than he'd seen in a decade.
Choma, who works as a project analyst for Progressive Insurance Company's special investigations unit looking into questionable claims, believes she was hoodwinked into buying an already tainted home by the former owners, whose relative works as a broker and helped them sell the home.
But belief is about all she has, with the exception of a $105,500 mortgage on a home she is unable to occupy - all her efforts to seek help or some form of justice have failed, she says. A claim filed with her homeowners' insurance company was denied, as the problems existed before she bought the home, and her lawyers believe the language of the purchase contract may exclude civil action even if the former owners had assets to pursue, she said.
At this point, it is believed that the individual who owned the home before her improperly and without a building permit built constructed two dormers on the roof. For want of a few dollars worth of step flashing, which would have sealed the roof properly, the home may now be a total loss.
"So disgusting," Choma said between ragged coughs after stepping out of the front door after giving a 10-cent tour of her contaminated home. Pulling binders, photographs, test results and other documents by the handful out of a crate in the back of her SUV, the single mother of one told her tale.
An inspection of the home performed before she bought it found the roof was between 12 and 15 years old and showed signs of normal wear but should last another eight years before being replaced, she said.
However, other written opinions she has since received state the roof was improperly built and probably leaked since it was new, Choma said.
In October, she received a report identifying mold samples collected on the second floor as poisonous, and later tests of first-floor materials and furniture also came back positive, leading analysts to recommend she gut the home.
Her best hope at this point is locating another buyer who backed out of a purchase arrangement before she discovered and began her attempts to buy the home. Choma believes they backed out because they learned exactly how much of a "fixer-upper" they would have been buying, which in her view would prove the seller defrauded her.
According to Choma, the sellers lied on at least four points while trying to sell the home: The roof obviously leaks, the cellar flooded seven times in less than a year, more of the property floods with standing water than the sellers admitted and the home has suffered overall water damage, she said, stating her belief the former occupants could not possibly have overlooked the home's troubles.
The last owners moved out just prior to the holiday season and until the sale closed were paying two mortgages. Before doing so, they covered existing patches of mold with new paint, new carpet, and caulk. In one case, they stacked furniture against a wall to cover mold, Choma claims.
"They wanted to be done with this house. The house was making them sick," she said.
The former owners were not alone in this experience.
Other than shots of rotting beams and a $7,500 roofing job that turned out to be pointless, among her trove of photos are several shots taken while Choma suffered what she described as a fungal infection covering much of her face with red blotches.
She also claims hair loss, memory loss, headaches, peeling eyelids and frequent bloody noses among other symptoms she suffers, allegedly as a result of exposure to toxic mold spores.
Fearing for the health of her daughter, Alicia Capano, an accomplished athlete whose father is allergic to mold, Choma allowed her ex-husband and grandparents custody so the child wouldn't be uprooted from Averill Park schools months before junior high graduation or fall behind on her schoolwork. She had had sole custody.
The Rensselaer County Health Department refuses to get involved, citing a lack of state standards for mold contamination and the fact it was not a landlord-tenant dispute, and told her mold inspectors exist to scare the public.
"I knew nothing. When this happened, I had mold in my hallway. All I knew was I had mold and the color was black," Choma said of her lack of knowledge of toxic mold one year ago.
She hopes to see the former owners held accountable, as she believes they must have known the home was a hazard, and also the inspector she paid to protect her.
"This is what he does for a living. He should have known. I didn't pay this man money because a year later I'd be forced to abandon this house," Choma said.
Now living in a Colonie apartment, she's gearing up to fight M&T Bank, which holds her mortgage. It is her hope the bank will decide to write off the mortgage under the circumstances, but her attorney Craig Crist feels it is more likely to sue her, based on the promissory note she signed.
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Jimmy McDonald http://www.StartRemodeling.comJimmy@StartRemodeling.com http://www.ToxicMoldUSA.comMcMoldMan@ToxicMoldUSA.com Jimmy McDonald ( RemodelingGuy) specifically assumes no legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information or process disclosed. The above further expressly advises that any use of or reliance upon the information and or opinion disclosed is at your risk .
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#181 - 02/26/06 11:47 AM
Re: Homeowner says mold make her home uninhabitable
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Metalogre
Do It Yourselfer
Registered: 02/26/06
Posts: 1
Loc: Cincinnati, OH
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I know exactly how this woman feels because I'm in the same boat.
I bought this house back at the end of 2002, and not much later I noticed a major problem.
The house is on a slab, the ductwork is in the slab, and after snow melts or rains, the ducts (like clay pot material) get anywhere from 1-3 inches of water in them.
So when this condition is present, I'm assuming that when the water evaporates from the heat or AC it clings to the colder exterior walls and I get black mold at the inside top of the exterior walls in my bedroom, kid's bedroom, and LR. In the other bedroom and kitchen I get mold at the bottom of the walls, which I'm thinking is just from the wet dirt around the house from poor drainage.
Other than this major problem, the shower is in bad shape because the liner is deteriorating and brittle and also has mold around the sides; and my driveway, sidewalk, & back patio are also in the same condition so I doubt I would be able to sell it in this shape.
I haven't lived here long enough to have enough equity to fix these things just to sell it and get out of it, and I think my kids and myself are getting sick from the mold.
I don't know what else to do other than just move out and foreclose on it. I also talked to an attorney last year but he said if I don't have proof that the seller knew about the problems, there is not much we could do.
On top of all this I'm not good at fixing/remodeling things. Small projects I can handle but plumbing, digging, & remodeling an entire bathroom/kitchen and such is out of the question.
Help please 
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