Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Wellness Real Estate Podcast. Today, we’re thrilled to have Jason Earle, the founder of GotMold, joining us once again. In part one, we explored how top agents tackle mold issues, especially on the buying side.
Now, in part two, we’re focusing on what you can do to boost your listings, enhance your brand, and demonstrate to clients that you generally care. By staying informed about mold and having the right resources, you’ll show clients that you’re equipped to handle any challenges that come their way. Mold doesn’t have to be a scary subject.
Knowledge is key. So stay tuned, because this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss. Let’s grow.
Welcome to The Wellness Real Estate Podcast, where you’ll discover a groundbreaking strategy that is transforming real estate marketing. In every episode, we focus on topics that will help you have more authentic engagements and meaningful conversations about your business. As the wellness real estate impact grows with projections reaching 850 billion by 2027, don’t miss this opportunity to revolutionize your approach, generate more leads and increase sales, becoming the community connector you’re meant to be.
I’m Sheila Alston and I’m your host. I’m also the founder of Healthy Home Media, where I help agents all over the country leverage this new trend in the industry to spark new conversations that get people to listen to you and notice your brand. So if you’re tired of spinning your wheels without the consistent leads to show for it, then stay tuned.
This podcast is your guide to standing out in a rapidly evolving market, guaranteed to change the way you think about real estate marketing.
Okay, welcome, Jason. I’m so glad you’re here again today.
So good to be here.
Yeah. You know, if you missed the first episode, go back and check it out because Jason shared an incredible story about who he got started in the mold world, even featuring his mold sniffing dog. Plus, he offered some fantastic insights on how top producers handled mold issues.
But today, we’re going to dive into part two, so let’s jump right in. First of all, I think it’s important to understand mold and its impact. So many people brush this topic under the rug because they just don’t want it to be a big deal, or they don’t want it to derail at closing.
But in your opinion, what are the health risks of mold exposure and why should potential buyers and sellers be aware?
Well, so it’s different for everybody, quite frankly. So it has a lot more to do with individual susceptibility than it does with the type of mold or even quite frankly, with the quantities, although like many things, the dose does make the poison. So, contrary to popular opinion, well, I should say contrary to the opinion of the people who have been through it, there actually are safe levels, right?
Mold is a normal part of a healthy environment. Mold spores are actually hormetic stressors. They’re actually good for you in small amounts.
They train your body how to respond to the world because we live on planet fungi, but in larger amounts, you tend to see reactions to them that fall within four categories. You’ve got basically allergic, which is typical upper respiratory, you know, has hay fever-like symptoms, you know, sinus issues and sneezing, coughing, that kind of thing. Dermal irritation, hives, those kinds of things.
So, allergic. Then you also have inflammatory. And, you know, most people these days are aware that most disease actually starts with inflammation.
And so, mold falls within that category in a strange way. Both aggravates existing inflammatory disease, and it also tends to bring out latent inflammatory disease, like autoimmune disease, which we now have a hundred on the books. So, nobody knows how many of those are caused by mold, but we know that almost all of them are aggravated by it.
So, that’s a big deal. Then you also have the cases where you have toxicity, and toxicity is what most people talk about, but it’s actually a much smaller percentage of the mold-related illness, but it’s still important because mold does produce potent toxins. It does react on a toxic level to cells, and so it should not be ignored.
In fact, mycotoxins are what everybody talks about, and believe it or not, a lot of that comes from food, but we also do have some small exposure in buildings. And then lastly, most, it’s not quite rare, but it’s the least frequent, and that is fungal infections, okay? So that’s mostly what people have, a compromised immune system.
But guess what? That’s a big percentage of the population these days, you know? So that might include people that have diabetes.
It’s not just the HIV patients and the cancer patients and people that have had organ transplants and things like that, which you typically think of as our population gets more and more unhealthy, unfortunately, more and more people have a compromised immune system. So allergic, inflammatory, toxicity, or toxic, and infection. So it affects a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
So that’s the very long short answer.
Yeah, no, I love it. It just brings more awareness to why as an agent, when you’re going through a home, you should pay attention to this and not just say, let’s paint over it because especially if someone has chronic issues, this could really impact their health. So you could be a great agent by really being their defender, by looking out for some of this stuff.
So in your opinion or given your expertise, what are some signs that they can look out for when they’re just doing a walkthrough so that they can maybe see if they’re smold or how can they get better at that?
Sure. Actually, before we get into the building, just a couple of other things to be aware of as an agent, you want to also learn more about who’s going to be there. Because we just talked about how mold affects you, but the people that it affects and the type of people, it’s not just the people with pre-existing conditions.
Young children, expectant moms, elderly, anyone with pre-existing conditions. In addition to looking for the signs in a building, you also want to know your customer and know who’s going to be living in that building because that’s what will allow you to dial in the sensitivity level that you should operate with when it comes to helping them avoid major potholes and pitfalls. Helping them avoid buildings that some people may be more well equipped to deal with.
That’s on the people side. On the building side, what you’re looking for is any sign of moisture. Mold is a moisture problem.
That’s the bottom line. People think my mold is the problem, mold is the symptom. Mold is the very predictable biological by-product of stuff getting wet and staying wet for more than a couple of days.
It’s that simple. Unfortunately, we build our buildings out of mold food these days, so it’s nearly ubiquitous. You’re looking for moisture problems, and that’s any sign of dampness, and that’s visual signs, that’s also olfactory or scent that you might pick up, odors you might pick up, and then also trying to find out as much about the building history, seeing how the building is situated on the property, so site selection or if you’re in your construction.
But of course, if you’re talking about an existing property, is the building built into a hill? That’s a big red flag, right? Is it low lying where water actually runs down the hill to it?
Is the wall, is the foundation wall like a dam? That could be problematic. And so you’re going to look for any sign of moisture in the building
You’re going to look for any signs of potential moisture intrusion into the building. You’re going to look for maintenance issues. There actually is a fascinating research paper where they were able to from the curb determine the essential asthma risk level of the interior of the home based upon visible red flags related to maintenance.
So this is gutters that are overflowing, bushes touching the house, algae on the outside of the siding, right? Trees overhanging too much, too much shade, windows that have missing caulk, and these kinds of things, driveways pitched into the house, sidewalks pitched in. So you’re looking for anything that could lead to moisture because ultimately that’s the enemy.
Right, right. Oh my gosh. And so you just identified so many things that they could be looking for, but what if this agent is on a listing appointment and they’re seeing some of these signs?
I mean, they’re going to want to get the listing, or do they want to get the listing?
I mean, that’s the question, right? So it depends on who your buyer is or it depends on who you’re selling. It depends on the market you’re trying to serve.
See, I think before we hopped on here, I was reminded of my previous career, where I was a commission salesman. I was a stockbroker, right? And so I relate very much to the commission based salesperson.
And someone who’s there to build value and hopefully have a consultative approach. But you can’t be all things to everybody. And you have to figure out why you want to be a wellness real estate professional.
If you’re just doing it to make money, they’ll see through that, right? Because you’re just going to be another, it’s just a transactional thing. If you want to build your career as a wellness real estate professional, I think you have to be willing to say no to a lot of stuff.
You have to raise your standards the same way you would if you want to choose a healthier lifestyle yourself, right? You’re going to say no to a lot of stuff that you normally would have said yes to. And therein lies the ability for your authenticity to do part of your sales for you, because that comes through.
It’s a non-verbal thing. It’s a resonant frequency, not to say woo-woo, but it’s true. People like to be with people that are like them.
And affluent, health driven, wellness aware people will pick up on these things. And so when I was dealing with a lot of realtors back when I was still doing mold dog enhanced assessments, the most successful realtors were the ones who quickly discerned whether or not this was a building that was going to suit their client’s best needs. When it comes to listing, coaching people is the key, I think.
Letting them know that they can get a better value if they do the necessary on their own clock and on their own nickel. But you can lead a horse to water, no pun intended. But you can’t necessarily make them do the things that need to be done.
And in that case, then they can disqualify themselves. It sounds like a very hard line approach, but I think there’s a philosophy that you have to develop around this. It has to be yours.
But I think it comes down to determining who you really want to serve and how you want to serve them.
Well, are all of these moisture issues fixable, though? What if it’s a beautiful, historic home that’s just gorgeous, and you do want to list it because it’s in a great area, great location, and you possibly have some buyers, but you go into the basement and you smell that musty smell?
Every building is different. Some buildings, that odor, by the way, will remain because of the nature of the materials. So odors can embed themselves in porous materials.
So it just depends on the situation. There’s no hard and fast answer for that. But I have, after being in thousands and thousands of homes, I have only said this house is not habitable and it can’t be saved twice.
So there’s always a way. Now, of course, it’s time and money, right? If you don’t have time and money, at most things, you can solve a lot of them.
But when it comes down to old homes, believe it or not, they tend to be, believe it or not, more easily cleaned. The moisture problems tend not to manifest as big mold problems because the materials don’t support fungal growth. Modern buildings since like 1945 support fungal growth much better than the old plaster, brick, lath buildings.
So yeah, it’s a matter of how it’s built. And so you tend to be able to get away with a building less expensive, less demolition, less expensive remediation with less demolition. And so, you know, if it doesn’t have drywall, is that what you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So plaster is great because mold actually doesn’t like it won’t grow on plaster, grow on the paint. It’ll grow on the dust inside the wall cavities.
But it but not to any significant degree. Also, there’s no insulation in most of the old, old buildings if they haven’t been renovated. And so there’s there’s not a trap, there’s not fluffy stuff in there holding the moisture.
So there’s a lot of counterintuitive stuff when it comes to this. I think the most important thing that you can tell people whether it be, you know, whether you get the listing or not, giving people the coaching they need to understand that, that moisture is the issue. They need to get that fixed immediately.
If they fix the moisture problem, the problem will stop. It will go away. But it will stop getting worse.
And sometimes that means fixing leaks. Sometimes that means dehumidifying. Sometimes it means both.
Right. Well, there is an advantage, I would say, as a listing agent, if you were able to convince the seller to be able to have this documentation or maybe if they’ve just, if they have maintained their house well, do you recommend that they just take good records and show that? Or is there always an advantage to getting some sort of certification or getting an inspection?
That’s a great question. There’s no such thing as a mold certification that’s worth anything, so don’t go buying into that. That doesn’t mean that there are people selling it.
To certify a property mold-free is, well, let’s just say conditions change so quickly that you could walk out the door and have a spill or a leak can happen, and then 24 hours later, you’re there again. It can happen that quickly. So my experience is that if you proactively address all known moisture problems, clean up all known resulting mold problems, document that with either a contractor’s attestation that it’s been cleared, or lab results of your own, ideally a combination thereof, that will usually suffice.
And that also answers most of the disclosure laws that are on the books in the states which require them.
Right. Well, so then what are some, just given all the remediations that you’ve been a part of, what are some common mistakes that sellers make regarding mold that maybe could delay or complicate the sale?
Well, I would say that the most important, the biggest mistake is not having an inspector involved, because remediators are paid by the pound, so to speak. They’re paid by the size of the project. And an inspector’s job is to come in and an independent inspector, right?
One that is not in the pockets of your agent, or your, quite frankly, and the remediation contractors and everyone else, right? So there’s an ecosystem here that ideally has some boundaries between those professionals, so that there’s some objectivity. So a qualified inspector who does their charge will come in, identify the areas of concern, delineate where it begins and where it ends, figure out what the surgical sort of removal area is, and then what needs to be cleaned.
And that’s done through a combination of physical assessments and then testing of the air and surfaces. That same thing should be done after the remediation is done to document the delta or the change that’s occurred. So you can see it before and after, it’s kind of like bookends for the project.
And in the middle, there’s a remediation scope or an invoice, paid invoice. That’s your package, right? That’s what you hand over.
Yes, we have confirmed mold problem that was beyond hygiene, which is basically how most of the disclosure laws work. If it’s beyond like the mold on your grout, I had a significant mold problem of significance, and here’s the inspection report, here’s the remediation invoice paid, and here’s the post-remediation testing. If you skip over that, there’s a bunch of things that can happen.
First of all, you can get taken to the cleaners by the remediator. Second of all, if you don’t have documentation that you actually did the testing at the end, it’s he said, she said, right? This is a microscopic organism.
You need to verify it with microscopic analysis. And so having that data is critical. And also, quite frankly, not having an inspector or what they call an IEP, which is an independent environmental professional.
What you end up with is a lot of non-standard practices being followed. What that means is you’re going to have some remediators coming in, and they’re going to spray stuff. They’re going to fog the building.
They’re going to, who knows what they’re going to do, but they’re not following the industry standard, which is the IICRC S520. And it’s important to work with contractors that are certified by IICRC, but also to make sure that they are agreeing to adhere to that standard, which also outlines the importance of having an inspector and a remediator that are distinctly separate in their roles and have no financial ties.
Yeah, so are they testing for just mold in the air? Or are they swiping things down? And you brought up a good point, like what if it’s just mold in the cocking somewhere and they don’t have a moisture problem?
Is this something, do they have to get an inspector for that kind of thing too? Or I know I’ve just asked a bunch of questions.
Yeah, so the testing is a combination of air and surface tests.
Okay.
However, there are surface tests, one of them is called ERMI, that’s always high. And so if you see this in a real estate transaction, you’re going to be chasing some ghosts, unfortunately. It’s almost impossible to get a good ERMI score.
So it’s a very popular test within the functional health care community. And honestly, I think it’s because it drives a lot of protocols. But it’s very problematic.
And so those wipe tests, those surface tests are usually not the best way to go about assessment or post remediation. Air tests are really helpful for post remediation. They can also be helpful for diagnostics.
And that’s using something called spore traps, these little cassettes right here, for example. We happen to sell a test kit that uses those. So we really believe in that method.
But a good inspector is going to look at that mold on the grout, for example. It’s a great example and say, is this mold on the grout or is that grout actually compromised? Is water getting behind there and potentially causing a mold problem in that wall?
Big difference. Mold on grout versus missing grout. Actually, I’m more concerned, and I say this all the time, I’m more concerned about missing grout than I am moldy grout.
Really? Yeah, because mold on the grout won’t become airborne. It’s not really a health hazard.
It’s minor in the size and scope of it. It doesn’t have any nutrition to support any significant colonization, so it doesn’t produce the toxins that make mold famous. So it’s just an aesthetic thing.
But mold behind a wall is not an aesthetic thing. You won’t even see it, but it can be a major health hazard.
Right. But if someone has moldy grout, what is your recommendation on getting rid of that? I mean, bleach is not supposed to be good for your health, and I know that it doesn’t necessarily get rid of the mold in the first place.
So what do you recommend?
Might be the only place the bleach is actually advisable. Believe it or not, yeah. So the idea with bleach is that people use it especially on like porous things, for example, sheet rock.
And bleach is mostly water. It’s 97% water, in fact. And we’ve already addressed the fact that mold is a moisture problem.
And so when you put bleach on mold, the bleach part, the sodium hypochlorite, which is actually what makes bleach bleach, that evaporates pretty quickly. And so hence, you can smell. It’ll bleach the surface, it makes it look clean, but it leaves behind all this dead fungal matter.
And then the water and then the bleach evaporates, leaving behind extra moisture. So you just added moisture to a moisture problem. And that’s why it’s so counterproductive to use bleach.
But when you’re dealing with something that’s got a very limited surface area, like grout, where there’s no nutrition to support a lot of growth, and you’re basically bleaching it to clean it, bleaching it, and then you’re going to treat it again. You can use the bleach pens to do grout if you want. Some people will remove the grout all together, wear a mask for that, and ventilate, but mostly for the dust, but also because there’s fungi in it.
And then replace it. But here’s the key, when you replace grout, or if you bleach the grout, there are grout sealants. And this is what prevents it from getting moldy again, because mold is not actually growing on the grout, it’s growing on the soap scum and the debris that gets stuck in the little pores of the grout.
So if you seal it, then that stuff doesn’t happen again.
How often should homeowners do that?
Well, they should have sealed it when it was first installed, which is where most of these things fail. And also caulk, by the way, is also something, it’s caulk and grout. And again, these are aesthetics, but they’re the things that people see.
They’re the things that people focus on, especially if they’re looking at a home and they don’t really know what they’re looking at. They’ll look at the hygiene of a bathroom, and the grout tends to be a focal point for whatever reason. So how often should they do it?
First of all, it should be sealed in the first place, and then every time it’s renovated or repaired, you should seal it again. And then if you do end up with compromised grout and you have to clean it, then you just seal it again. So it’s just on an as needed basis.
And if you see any missing, if you see it break off or fall off, that’s key. The most important thing is don’t let grout or caulk be missing. That’s also at what they call the cove where the wall meets the tub.
But then also where the tub meets the floor. I’ve seen floors just rot out. I’ve seen tubs go through the floor because water had gotten behind all of that and rotted out the structure.
Wow. So true. So just maybe every year when you’re doing your home maintenance, just check for that kind of stuff.
Yeah. Just keep your eyes peeled for it. And if you see stuff accumulating in there, you may give it a little touch up and then seal it.
So if someone does have an inspection and they say, yeah, you need some mold remediation in the laundry room or in the bathroom or something, what, I know that there’s probably a giant range, but what can people expect remediation cost to be?
It depends on where you live in the country, depends on how big the project is. It depends on whether or not they are, there are basically two kinds of remediators. There are ones that work for insurance companies.
And what I mean by that is that they do insurance work. So they’re doing water damage, sewage backups, a lot of commercial stuff, drying, dehumidifying, mucking and gutting. This is the low cost, low quality, oftentimes without any testing done before or after.
This is getting in and getting out. And then you’ve got the other side of the spectrum, which are what they sometimes call Q-tip remediators. This is equally problematic because they tend to be very expensive and they tend to be catering to an affluent audience that’s being cared for by a functional provider.
They oftentimes have Lyme disease and mold and all these other things are going. So that’s the other extreme. Those remediators can be $100,000 for a house and the guys on the other side can be $1,500.
Right, right.
It’s a huge delta. On average, $5,000 to $10,000 is the national average range for remediation. But the key is defining remediation.
The root word is remedy, which means fix the moisture problem. That has to be done. If you don’t fix the moisture problem, if you don’t identify the moisture problem and fix it, that’s not remediation.
And then you have to remove the mold. You cannot spray or treat in place. And so if you’re getting quotes, regardless of the price and the moisture problem is not front and center as the focal point, and then they’re not telling you that they’re going to remove this stuff carefully with containment and negative air pressure, they’re not a remediator.
Do you have specific questions or just, I guess you just identified some of the things to look for, to know that it’s going to be a good remediator? But what are some other signs that they’re…
Well, I can give you a link to, and in fact, I’ll do that so you can put it in the show notes, on how to hire a mold remediation contractor. Oh, okay. And that will help a lot.
So, you know, asking them what standards they follow and, you know, you want to ask if they use chemicals. Sometimes I encourage people to ask a trick question, which is, what chemicals do you use? And if they answer with any, they failed, because there are no chemicals to be used during mold remediation.
Oh, really?
Yeah. Yeah. There’s no, there’s a, it’s a hugely common, a pervasively common misconception that you need to kill the stuff.
There is no need to kill mold. Yeah. You know, it’s almost as if you have to, like, sneak up behind it and snuff it out before you remove it from the house, you know, like, it’s not like that.
You just cut it out, bag it and remove it. Yeah. And then you’ve made dust.
When you do that, you clean that dust up. You’re cleaning up all the extra spores and stuff that have cut that have broken free. So remediation is essentially setting up environmental controls to contain the dust that you make during the work so they protect the occupants and also the people that are working in the space.
So it’s preparation. And then it’s controlled demolition. You’re you’re cutting out the materials that can’t be cleaned, like sheetrock and insulation and carpet padding and stuff like that carpet.
And then you’re going to clean all the air and surfaces within the space. And then in many cases, just outside the remediation area as a failsafe. But in no remediation guidance documents that ever existed, that were based on best practices is a killing mold part of it.
It’s not part of it. But it is pervasively used in remediation done by contractors who are taking shortcuts. It’s very inexpensive to use chemicals and fogs and stuff instead of cleaning, but it’s totally ineffective.
Yeah, and it just introduces more toxins to someone who’s already probably compromised.
That’s not a good idea. By the way, it’s a lot easier to get the mold out of your house and it is those toxins. Once they’re in, a lot of those remediation chemicals leave behind residues, some of which are endocrine disruptors, hormone modulators, carcinogens.
Not to mention the fact that we need a healthy microbiome in our building, which means that we need, just like we need microbes in our gut to do most of the dirty work, to digest our food and make B vitamins and makes neurotransmitters and all that stuff. We have similar dynamics on our skin. You are covered with a sheath of microbes.
Our microbiome in us, on us, and around us is the hallmark of health. Diversity, biological diversity is directly correlated with health. That’s both in our bodies and in our buildings.
That’s amazing. That’s probably why, as you were saying that the swipe test gets more microbes on it, just because we already have them in our buildings, as compared to you were telling me about the air system that you have measures the outside and the inside so that you can tell the difference.
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, the thing that you want to watch out for, if you’re in the business, or if you’re actually, if you’re in the market for remediation, is watching out for these people that sell that mold is bad.
It is true that mold growth in doors is bad news, but mold itself is benign. It’s not out to hurt you, and you’re going to find it on every surface, not mold growth, mold spores. They’re on every surface of your house.
They’re on your eyeglasses. They’re on the face of your watch. They’re in every breath you take.
So just, you know, just grabbing surface samples here and there, and then interpreting the data as this thing works. Oh, look, that mold’s here. Congratulations.
You just confirmed that mold is ubiquitous. You did not confirm that there’s a mold problem.
But what’s the difference between a regular mold spore and like black mold is supposed to be so terrible for you?
That’s another great comment and misconception. I’ll give you an article that I wrote about the myth of black mold too. The mold come in lots of different colors.
Some of them are in fact colorless. And so many of the black molds are non-toxigenic. And there are several toxigenic species that are not black.
And so this is a classic sort of pop culture media oversimplification that kind of gets hijacked. And so this happened, I won’t go into the whole story, but there was a woman named Melinda Ballard who sued her insurance company because of negligence and bad faith. They mishandled the claim, and she ended up with a $34 million settlement, and it’s what led to the Mold is Gold thing.
But she really pounded the whole black mold, toxic mold drum so loudly that it got beaten into our culture. The fact is that the molds that people are talking about when they talk about black mold are late stage colonizers. What that means is that you have to have a moisture problem for a while for them to pop up.
So those species, while toxin producing, indeed, are more of an indication of a long-term chronic white water problem, which is in and of itself a health hazard, regardless of the species of mold that’s present. So I look at them as an indicator of an issue, and it’s never surprised to me that people are sick when they live in buildings that have that present, but I don’t blame that particular species. I look at that species as, oh, of course, that’s growing there, because that problem has been there for a long time.
And so buildings where those types of molds are growing generally have occupants that are experiencing health issues, but not necessarily on a causative basis. So if you took that one species out, they would probably still be having issues because there are other microbes at work there that are not black. In fact, some of them are not even mold.
There are bacteria that will grow alongside of these that produce toxins too. So what we’re looking at again, I always want to bring it back to the bottom line, which is that a mold problem is a moisture problem. When we start getting into looking at the species and say, well, I want this one, but not this one, you don’t get to make that choice.
And when you have a moisture problem of any significance, it is the health hazard. The molds are just sort of the cast of characters that flow through that story.
That’s amazing. So if you’re an agent out there, I mean, do you have advice on any agents? Like, how should they work with mold specialists?
Should they just learn who the great ones are in their area? Or how do you, what’s your advice on how an agent can work well with a mold specialist in their area?
My feeling is that I’ve always kind of struggled with the fact that mold guys are brought in after there’s all these issues found. You know, the home inspectors already come through and, you know, usually the home inspector flies the stuff and sends, sends, or suggests the mold guy comes in. And, you know, a lot of money and time has been spent at that point.
And it’s 11th hour. My feeling has always been, and I’ve done this very successfully with, you know, I don’t know, less than 100 clients over the years, but getting in there first, getting a mold, because a building’s number one enemy is moisture. It’s an enemy for the longevity of the structure.
It’s also an enemy for the health of the occupants. And so if you can get a building that doesn’t have any moisture problems, if you can get that straightened out first, then bring in the home inspector and check out the outlets and the appliances and all that other stuff. That stuff is secondary, in my opinion.
The first thing is, does the building shed wind and water well? And if the building sheds wind and water well, then it qualifies for the next step, but the process is backwards, in my opinion. However, mold guys are more expensive than home inspectors, right?
So my suggestion is developing relationships with not just mold specialists. Lately, I prefer that people that are not skilled and experienced with mold issues turn to building biologists more so than mold guys. Mold guys tend to be more opportunistic, candidly.
They tend to be one trick ponies. If you ask them, they have no education in the space. If you ask them, usually they were a contractor or who knows, maybe they were flipping pizzas, they were flipping burgers, making pizza six months before.
So it’s a career path which unfortunately attracts a lot of people that shouldn’t be in it. Whereas building biologists have to jump through some hoops. They actually have to get an education.
They dedicate a lease a year of their life to getting an education that’s broader than mold. And in that study, they’re learning about the other aspects of buildings that can also be problematic. And I just think that you tend to get a higher quality professional that way, that’s got a more holistic view, W-H-O-L-E, but also dovetails better with a wellness real estate professional in the first place.
And they also tend not to be remediators. They don’t have their hand in that cookie jar. They really do, I think, generally respect their position in this space as an objective and biased voice.
And unfortunately, there are only, there’s a small list to choose from, but they are distributed around the country. And so I would cozy up to your local building biologist and try to get them into those houses earlier, or sooner rather than later.
Right. Well, because what I’m hearing from you is that a mold specialist didn’t necessarily need to go through any training to deem themselves as a mold specialist?
The training is, well, before there was an industry standard, there were these, to say diploma mill is giving it too much credence. More like certification mills where you could, some of them didn’t even have to take a test, register. I mean, not even worth the paper it’s printed on.
Then the standards popped up, and then there was an organization that was doing some good training, IAQA, and their credentials meant something, and then that kind of went away. They had some industry problems, and there’s been a couple of groups that have popped up in their space that aren’t holding the bar where it was, and then more recently, there are now, I think, five states that have licensing requirements, and what they did was lower the bar, actually. Now, you can get a license in those states with a 50-question open book exam after sitting in a class for three days, and there’s no field requirements, there’s no prerequisites, there’s no internship, there’s no nothing.
So, the mold industry in general has devolved, candidly. It was already in that shape, but I think the bar has been lowered. And that’s part of the reason why I’m so focused on being behind the microphone here, to raise awareness around this, because it is in many ways caveat emptor, it’s buyer beware.
You have to really choose your professionals carefully, and really be willing to ask hard questions. And if you get a weird feeling, believe it.
Well, and I feel like because of the money factor, it seems like luxury homes are the ones that, you know, you can, I mean, that have, they have the ability to get rid of the mold or whatever. But I remember as talking and you were just saying, it’s not a luxury consideration. It’s a necessity for everybody.
And so how can that be more accessible to everyone? Just, I guess, maintenance, right? Because that doesn’t need to cost that much or…
It’s much better to take care of a problem in the beginning instead of waiting it till it’s a big problem, right?
Right, but that is not the American way. Right, so we are reactive and we oftentimes front-load, low cost, and then the back end is where we get hurt. So this is a great example.
We build building out of she-rock, it’s fast and cheap. But the repairs and remediation are really expensive because you got wall assemblies and layers, and there’s lots of… Whereas if you built a building in the first place the right way, out of something that doesn’t have a wall cavity, more expensive upfront, but guess what?
Remediation doesn’t exist. If you do have to remediate, it’s surface cleaning, and it’s literally just something that you could do yourself in most cases or you can go rent a little bit of equipment if you felt inspired to do so. So yeah, the big houses tend to also have problems because a lot of those spaces tend to be out of sight, out of mind, by the way.
And so there are a lot of famous cases of high-profile people like Michael Jordan and Ed McMahon, and guys who had big mold problems. And you read the lawsuits and you’ll see it was in the wing, the west wing or the north wing of the house where no one had been in, who knows how long.
Ten years.
Yeah. So the size of the house actually does unfortunately correlate somewhat to maintenance issues because the bigger the house, the harder it is to maintain. But small houses, yes, indeed.
Theoretically, it should be less expensive to remediate. Certainly, maintenance is the issue. But keep in mind that mold also is directly tied to a lot of psychiatric issues, right?
So mold and dampness in doors is directly correlated, according to a Big Brown University study that was done in 2008. And 6,000 people were queried about their conditions in their home and their mental health. And they found a very strong correlation.
So when you start talking about a moisture problem, turning into a mold problem and then deferred maintenance, and then the compounding of that, and then next thing you know, that starts affecting the cognition and the mental health of the occupants. Oftentimes, that actually causes them to not leave the building. They get so depressed, and then they don’t leave, and then the building makes them sicker.
And so the maintenance gets deferred further. So there’s a real negative loop that gets stuck. And that’s one of the things that I think a lot of listing agents will run into, is that it’s kind of like Gray Garden Syndrome, right?
Where the people have like lived there for so long, and you’re like, how do you get, they’re stuck there, and you want to help them get out, and they need to get out, but you know, how do you, and so this is where, you know, you have to figure out whether or not you want to go the distance and help coach them through that process. But at the end of the day, yeah, if you can get prevention in there, great. But most of the time, by the time you’re talking about it, it’s already too late.
Yeah, I remember last time we talked, you had all of these statistics, and I’m trying to remember what they were for, but do you remember what all those statistics were that we were talking about?
Yeah, so there’s a couple of really important numbers that I think people should be aware of. First of all, 47% of homes have a mold and moisture problem of significance, according to Lawrence Berkeley Labs. That was actually a meta study, so they looked at a whole bunch of different studies and then they drew a line down the middle, and the numbers were much higher in commercial buildings, so it’s a pervasive issue.
About 114 million households, roughly, in the country, and about 75% of those are sheetrock based. And so, of course, buildings that get wet and stay wet for more than 24 hours, 48 hours, really, can develop a mold problem. So what we have is sort of this humongous opportunity for mold to just continue to occur and recur.
And then within the population that lives in those buildings, you’ve got these huge numbers of people that are severely affected by this. You’ve got 25 million asthmatics in the United States, of which 10 million are kids. And that number is up 100% in the last 10 years.
And according to EPA. Berkeley Labs, 25% of those cases are mold and dampness related. And then you’ve got 37 million Americans with chronic sinusitis.
That’s 11% of the population. And according to Mayo Clinic, 97% of those cases are mold and dampness related. So those are just two respiratory illnesses.
The mold and depression thing is a big deal. And how many people are depressed in the United States? Who knows?
A lot more than are admitting to it, and especially right now. I mean, we all know it’s election day right now, so who knows? Probably half the people are going to be depressed afterwards.
But jokes aside, the impact is massive. And unfortunately, it’s only growing by the day because we spend more and more time indoors, and now post-COVID, often in the same building.
I mean, the good news is, with all of this chronic illness, I mean, you see the medical industry changing. There’s so much more functional. There’s energy medicine coming in.
There’s just so much more new stuff that’s coming out because of this. And so, I mean, I do think that that’s why wellness real estate is now a thing. So I’m interested in learning all the stuff that you’re doing, and how do you see the future of real estate development evolving?
Well, I am working on two parallel paths to hopefully provide resources for the real estate industry as it sort of grows into the space that I think you envision and that I envision. And so we’re working on tests both for the building and for the body to hopefully detect this more accurately, quicker, and less expensively. So both for air surfaces, we’re also working on some sensors.
So ultimately, just trying to get to the problem before it gets to you. And I think that that’s a push that’s happening, not just from my vantage point, but I think there are a lot of very smart minds working in that direction. So I’m excited about that.
But we still build buildings out of paper mache. And so self-composing buildings, if you will, just add water. And so that in and of itself is a major problem.
And I think that there’s also a major push towards better materials, which is very exciting to me because if I do my work well, I make myself obsolete on that side of things. And so how many times are we going to build in flood zones with sheetrock and popsicle sticks? How many times are you going to rebuild in Florida or Puerto Rico or anywhere where we just continue to have these extreme climate events?
So what you’re starting to see is that people are saying, wait a second, let’s build to last. We didn’t have this problem before. It’s not just weather.
Didn’t they meet the three little pigs?
Right, even the dumbest of the three little pigs. Yeah, exactly. Didn’t build this house out of paper.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
So we’re working with some really fun materials. In fact, I happen to have a little piece right here. For anyone who’s looking or watching, this is a material called aerated autoclave concrete.
And hopefully you can zoom in a little on that. So see the pores in there. It’s like foam.
It’s concrete foam. I mean, it’s hard. It’s one sixth the weight of concrete.
And so they make it with a little bit of aluminum powder and it makes these really cool building blocks.
Does it feel like that pumice a little bit?
Yeah, it feels a lot like pumice. Yeah. Actually, that’s a great way to describe it.
I never thought of that, but it’s obvious. It is basically like cast pumice. And you can make it in any shape you want.
And it is very strong, compressive strength, tensile strength, and believe it or not, it’s slightly flexible. And then we’ve got this really cool graphene-additive mixture that we’re using for stucco and for mortar.
So instead of the wood framing and instead of the drywall, you’re doing that instead.
That’s right. So we’ve got a development going up in Austin, 32 homes called Sanctuary. And we’re building all of them with this.
And so this is the wood, it’s the insulation, it’s the siding, it’s also the drywall, it’s also the wallboard inside.
So how could that be more expensive? It sounds like it wouldn’t be more expensive if it’s…
It’s not. It’s the same price. Yeah.
If you value engineer it. So there’s a combination of things that you say. You save money on the material.
First of all, it’s one supplier. Yeah. Right?
So that just, the whole supply chain thing simplifies. You also, depending upon where you are, like down in Texas, we’re getting right out of Mexico on the rail line. So the shipping is inexpensive too.
One contractor does all that work. So you don’t have to have a framing contractor, an installation contractor, a siding guy, the drywall guy, and then you have to coordinate between them. So all of that, that’s time, that’s money.
What about the steel beams and the heavy headers and window headers and things like that? That’s not out of wood either? That’s all out of that?
Yeah, they’ll put rebar in to this. So they make headers and they put rebar into the wall.
So the whole process of just like normally how you see the foundation laid out, that’s basically what they’re doing for the framing. What about remodeling? What if someone wants to remodel this house someday and they’ve got this material in the wall?
You can cut it with a handsaw. It’s amazing stuff. Yeah, no, you can drill into it with a non-carbide bit.
This is amazing stuff. It’s a little bit brittle. So you can chip it, and that’s why we’re using that graphene mixture, because it makes it super strong.
So the block itself, we kind of wrap it in this graphene, almost like a stucco drywall compound and mortar. So you can give it the exterior rigidity and strength, but get all those other attributes. And so by the way, this material seems like, this just celebrated its 100th year this year.
It’s an old tech that is new to the United States. The graphene stuff I’m talking about is patent-pending. That’s very new.
But we’re combining the two. And so it’s also really, really quiet. The houses, you get into them and the temperature is very consistent through the house.
It has a different vibe. You can’t hear the outside as much and even from room to room, it’s much softer. And so it’s just a superior material.
And also when there’s extreme temperatures outside, if you take a blowtorch on this side, you won’t even be able to detect heat on this side.
Really?
Yeah.
So is it a 3D printing technology, like the 3D printer has to come around and do it?
No, this is just blocks and panels, this stuff. But you can put the graphene into the 3D printed material. And so we’re also talking to some groups about that, putting it into their concrete ink.
They still call it ink, which is kind of funny. But yeah, so what we’re seeing is that there is a large and growing appetite for buildings built differently. And these things often require early adopters to fund the very expensive stuff, but the costs have come down anyway.
So it’s no longer out of reach. The biggest obstacle is finding contractors that are willing and able to do this.
Willing and able to learn something new and try something new, and having a client that wants the new to try something new. I mean, we’re building a house right now. And I mean, it’s not that.
But yeah, luckily, I’m in San Diego, so I don’t think that there’s a lot of moisture issues.
But well, let’s talk. Maybe I don’t know how far along you are, but.
Well, we are. We’ve already got the framing and everything. The windows are going to go up, and the roof is going to go up next.
But it’s exciting to see something come together.
Let’s talk about that for a second. If you haven’t bought sheetrock, for example, here’s a great, there are a bunch of materials to choose. One of them is a paperless wallboard made by Dens Armor Plus.
This has got fiberglass on either sides of the paper, so it doesn’t support fungal growth.
What’s it called?
It’s called Dens Armor Plus. And so this is the advice for anyone who’s going through a renovation or new construction. Choose materials that don’t support fungal growth.
Now, you can’t always do AAC, which is what this concrete stuff is. You can’t always do, you can’t always choose or access these materials or the contractors that put them in, but you can choose paperless wallboard. You can also choose things that are like no VOC paints.
So paints that don’t have chemicals in them that off gas. You can also choose fiberglass insulation. If you’re gonna use fiberglass, that doesn’t have formaldehyde in it.
It’s formaldehyde free. You can also choose recycled fibers like blue jeans, believe it or not, recycled blue jeans.
And wool, I’ve heard of wool insulation too.
And there’s also something called rock wool, which is a mineral wool, and that is really good stuff. It’s expensive. It’s like 2X fiberglass, last I looked, but it is very, very good.
It’s moisture beads up on it. You know, it’s just really good stuff. The other kind of wallboard that’s really gaining some traction now, we’re using it in all of our concrete houses.
Oh, by the way, I’m also consulting on a project for the Department of Defense in the Marshall Islands. We’re building an experimental house down there to withstand corrosion and mold and stuff. And so in addition to this AAC, we’re also putting in what they call magnesium board.
And that magnesium board is exactly what it sounds like. It’s made of magnesium oxide. It looks a lot like cement board, but it’s about half the weight.
And you can put it up just like sheetrock. It takes a little bit of, you have to use special screws because it reacts and things like that. But again, this stuff is all available online.
And magnesium board now is readily available in most markets. Green builder supplies for this kind of stuff are an absolute godsend. They’re very passionate people there that will walk you through that and help you navigate the nuances of these materials.
Do you know Andy Pace?
I do. Yes. In fact, you introduced me.
Oh, yeah. Good.
Good.
I was going to say, I need to introduce you. That’s amazing. Wow.
Okay. So you would use magnesium, like when they put the tile on the wall, they’ll use that concrete board instead of drywall.
Yeah. And I like that.
Concrete board’s good.
For bathrooms, the contractors have finally gotten used to doing that instead of green boards, so I don’t like to tell them to do anything different.
Yeah.
Contractors are very reluctant to try anything new.
Well, because they know that they’ve tried it and they don’t want to just screw up, especially if they’re going to be the one that’s guaranteeing the home, I guess, if any problem comes when you move in, you’re going to call them. So they’re like, I don’t know if I want to try anything new. But this is kind of exciting.
So is Den’s Armor Plus a lot more expensive than the regular sheetrock?
It used to be like 2X. I haven’t priced it lately. The biggest issue is that it’s kind of hard to find sometimes.
So I call Georgia Pacific when necessary, and they’ll sometimes help me find out where it’s available in our market. I haven’t had to buy any recently. I did my whole, I renovated a farmhouse many moons ago and did the whole thing in it.
My point is that don’t just take the builders’ grade materials with anything these days. Nothing. I mean, just like most people that are in wellness, no, they’re not going to go just eat whatever someone puts in front of them, right?
It’s the same thing with building materials. Think of our building material companies as what they are, chemical companies. They have no obligation to provide safe stuff because our laws don’t require that.
So you have to be the advocate, just like with your health, just like with the doctors you choose for you and your family, you have to choose very carefully the building materials that get put into your home because you breathe 20,000 times a day, right? And every breath you take is meaningful. And actually, what’s crazy is that you breathe 30 pounds of air a day.
So get your mind around that. That’s more food and water than you drink by a multiple. And it’s equivalent of 2,000 gallons, which is enough to fill a swimming pool.
This is a big deal. And it’s the thing that you do the most that you think the least about. So do the stuff that’s necessary so that you don’t have to think about it anymore.
Well, and you compound that with we’re not going outside as much, so we’re spreading all that, breathing all that air inside. So the quality of your air is so important.
It’s crucial.
Yeah. Okay, so that leads me to your summit and your ongoing information, because if people want to learn more, I know you have a whole bunch of great resources and things people can take advantage of.
Absolutely. I would highly recommend that anyone that’s curious about this go to gotmoldsummit.com and sign up there. You get access to 33, I think, 34 interviews, as well as notes and a bunch of free gifts from the speakers and all sorts of really good stuff.
We put together the most robust group of experts ever in this space. And what’s really unique about it is that almost none of them have anything to sell. I’m talking about researchers, academics, people that don’t talk to consumers.
In fact, many of them were very camera shy because they’d never done it before. They’d never been interviewed for a summit or for a podcast, so it was actually adorable. But the thing is that there’s a consensus amongst them that is in direct conflict with the way things are done by a lot of the people in the industry.
And so that’s why I put those people in the room together, if you will, so that people who are really concerned about this and want to dive in, you can dive in as deep as you want. I got 45 hours for the content there. So and then there’s also a lot of, you know, we’ve got good summaries and notes.
And so, you know, you can navigate the content well, and it’s broken up into eight different themes. So gotmoldsummit.com is a great place for people to dive in. If you want to dive in the deep end, you don’t have to dive in the deep end.
Well, and I like how you framed it too, because it’s not on specific days. You can go in and just kind of learn what you want to learn and then go back to it if you want to learn more and take it at your own pace.
Yeah, thank you for that. So unlike most summits where there’s a weekend and it’s this big build up to that, we decided to A, make it free. So our sponsors are actually paying for the marketing so that we can bring awareness to it.
So we’re not charging our customers for that or our viewers. And the other thing is that it will be available all the time. There’s no fake velvet rope.
You can only get into this time and you have to pay after. We’re not playing that game. So we really want to get the information out there and make this be a more common conversation.
And then we will continue to update that. And so we’ll do another version of it next year. We’ll bring in some new speakers, some new subjects maybe.
Maybe get rid of some of the old updates and things. So I think this is gonna be an evergreen thing for us. And just continue to refine it and improve it.
And eventually I think we’ll end up with an in-person event because we want to bring the consumers, the doctors and the industry professionals all under one roof so that they can all hear the same thing and then move forward in some solidarity.
Well, and then you also mentioned you’re starting your YouTube channel. So what kind of content is going to be on that?
All the Summit will live there as well. And then I also have a vast treasure trove of sort of Q&A that’s emerging. So we just began building that out.
And so you can go to YouTube, GotMold USA, and you’ll see that some of the summit talks have moved over. But for the summit, you want to go to gotmoldsummit.com. That stuff will eventually move over.
The other thing that you might want to take a look at is we have an e-book. And I’ll drop it in the chat for you here. So you can put that in the show notes.
This is probably the most underrated thing that we do, because this is 45 pages of actionable tips that acts, wisdom, if you will, and as well, it also has a checklist that you can follow. If you want to do your own inspection, it has a lot of the do’s and don’ts and FAQs and how to find a professional, those kinds of things. So, this is a really great place for people to get started.
I would actually direct people here potentially even before the summit, believe it or not.
Okay. Well, I mean, that’s a good thing that they could just look and it could be a resource for them to give to their clients, right? Is the consumer the person who’s reading that e-book?
Absolutely. Yeah.
That’s great.
This is a great tool and we get a lot of really positive feedback.
Can agents use your e-book as their lead magnet if they want to?
Yeah. We could probably work something out. Yeah.
I mean, because it’s such great information and then they’re directing them to you too, but showing that they have extra knowledge in this area.
Absolutely. Yeah. Then we post fairly frequently on Instagram.
We’ll be posting all those summit updates and that’s-
What’s your Instagram handle?
GotMold.
Okay. You had mentioned that you have a resource to how to hire a molder mediator. Is that in that e-book or is that something different?
I will double-check on that and I’ll make sure that if it’s not in there, I will send you the article separately.
Okay. Awesome. And then your regular website is just gotmold.com.
gotmold.com. And that’s where we sell the Gotmold Test Kit, where you can get a kit that either allows you to test one, two, or three rooms using the same device that the professionals use, using spore traps and our air sampling pump. And then once you’ve used our kit, you keep the air sampling pump and you can buy refills, you can retest again for less.
And so, you know, it’s our way of being able to sort of give you a cost-effective first step in the safety and comfort of your own home without having to get permission from anybody to do so.
Yeah, because you saw a gap in the marketplace, right? That’s why you created that. And so what was the problem people were having?
Well, you know, I got started in this space many moons ago, and we pioneered the use of mold sniffing dogs, which was both very effective and also a lot of fun. And so we ended up with this ground swell of attention, and seemingly every reporter in the country wanted to interview my dog. I came along for the ride.
And so we ended up with all this national attention and national press. And from that, we had an onslaught of calls from people all over the country that we couldn’t service. And so invariably, they would ask us if there was a test kit we could recommend.
And so I looked high and low and couldn’t find anything that was even close to acceptable. And by the way, right around that same time, Consumer Reports did a similar sort of deep dive and found also that there was nothing that they could recommend. So we took the Consumer Reports study and our observations and reverse engineered all the problems that we found in those kits, partnered with the number 11 in the country, Eurofins, at the time it was MLIP and K, and now it’s the number 11 in the world, Eurofins, partnered with them to create the GotMold test kit.
And so we really engineered all the shortcomings out of the other kits. And the idea was really to create a cost-effective first step, to create a way to democratize access to high-quality lab data, is probably the best way to say it. And so far so good.
We launched two and a half years ago, and if you go on to Amazon or go to our website, you’ll see that people really like it. We got like 4.7 stars across the board.
Yay, that’s great.
Yeah, so it’s been a fun journey. And it’s not a replacement for a professional. Let me make this clear.
It’s like a pregnancy test kit. In the sense that you don’t start buying baby furniture because it’s positive. You go to the doctor, right?
So we encourage people to use the same kind of common sense. However, it is the same kind of test that a professional is going to use when they come to your house. So you’re not wasting money by doing that first.
In fact, you can often determine whether or not you need to take some action quickly. And that’s really our goal, is to give people the ability to do this safely, I mean, emotionally safely as well. Not inviting someone in your home that may use the data against you, and then to then use that information to maybe get your husband or wife on board, or maybe your boss or landlord, so that you can validate your concerns without breaking the bank.
Our kids start at $199, they go up to $299, and that includes all lab fees and shipping. There’s no surprises. So if you’re concerned about mold in your home, just let anybody can make that work.
Wow. I love it. Thank you for all the work that you do, and all the wonderful conversation we’ve had.
I’m so excited for just people to learn more about mold, and not be so scared of it, and just know what to do. So thank you so much.
Thank you, Sheila.
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