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SANDY — A realtor is calling on Utah lawmakers to tighten the reporting requirements for methamphetamine contaminated properties.
Brandon Hacker has been selling homes for about three years now. He says he's seeing about one home a month contaminated with meth. But he also says he has a way to cut down on the number of those homes put on the market.
"My test is really for my own self and my buyer," Hacker said. As a realtor, Brandon Hacker is representing his buyer, but he's also helping other prospective buyers by hiring a certified decontamination specialist to test the house for meth.
"With the furnace, if there was any meth smoke in the house at all, the air return system will pick it up and distribute it throughout the house," said Eric Wright, a decontamination specialist.
Wright tested a home on the market in West Valley City for methamphetamine. The house - under contract - is being tested because Hacker says he's seen too many homes contaminated.
but getting tested can help future buyers as well.
"If they get a certified test done, the health department will step in and protect us," Hacker said.
That's exactly what happened for a house in Sandy. Hacker had a buyer, but insisted that they do a meth test. It came back double the legal limit. The results were reported to the Health Department. The house is still for sale, but any buyer is barred from entry until it is cleaned up.
"I don't want this story to be like the previous years where the family with the baby buy the perfect house then the baby gets sick," Hacker said. So I'm stepping forward to say ‘Let's stop this before the family moves in.'"
The law on meth testing in Utah has a loophole: Hacker says if he had done a self-test on the house and not hired a certified specialist like Wright, he's under no obligation to report it to the seller, the state or the next buyer. He could have walked away and no one would have known.
"With inventory low, a lot of (realtors) say ‘I don't want to know, let's hope the next person doesn't want to know either,'" Hacker said.
That underscores the fact that right now in Utah, it's really up to each buyer to do a meth test. But hire a certified specialist to do it. That way you can walk away, but another person won't walk right in and buy it.
