EPA Lead Certification - MUST READ

[Timothy W.]

This was discussed before but not in enough detail.

"After April 22, 2010, property owners who perform these projects in pre-1978 rental housing or space rented by child-care facilities must be certified and follow the lead-safe work practices required by EPA's Renovation, Repair and Remodeling rule. To become certified, property owners must submit an application for firm certification (PDF) (9 pp, 642K) and fee payment to EPA. EPA will begin processing applications on October 22, 2009. The Agency has up to 90 days after receiving a complete request for certification to approve or disapprove the application."

http://www.epa.gov/lead/pubs/renovation.htm#owners

THE TRAINING CLASS ALONE DOES NOT CERTIFY YOU. I misunderstood this but figured it out tonight. EPA's website specifically says you "should" take the training course but "must" submit the application and wait 90 days to know if you're approved or not.

"These projects" is defined as "renovate, repair, or prepare surfaces for painting". This includes sanding, repairing holes, etc....over 6 square feet inside and 20 feet outside OR when you replace a window or "demolish" a painted surface.

Your application fee to get certified is $35.00 per EPA jurisdiction in addition to your training cost. If you have an approved state run program that you are certified in, it works as an alternative.

Here are some links that NAR put together to explain this in detail:

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/lead_paint_main

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/lead_paint_realtors

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/lead_paint_property_managers

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/lead_paint_property_managers_faq

http://www.realtor.org/government_affairs/lead_paint_realtors_faq

I've been informed that fines for noncompliance range up to $37,500 per day.

[J Scott]

First, thank you for posting...

Second, thank you for posting in the real estate forums, and not the Politics forum...while this is clearly good fodder for over there, it's better here...

This is clearly a ridiculous rule, for lots of reasons...if you want to protect renters, that's great...but don't pretend like you're protecting renters just to generate revenue for your government department...

Not to mention, property owners generally aren't the ones who do the renovations! If you're going to require someone to get certified to do this work, at least make it the contractors who are required to get certified, not the property owners.

I'm also curious if this now means that questions about the property owner's certification are going to start showing up on standard seller disclosure forms...which will just give buyers one more thing to not understand but to be concerned about...

[Timothy W.]

This one is too important for politics and frankly I can't think of anyone on the forum who'd be happy about this. I ran into a problem though.

Everyone look at this link. It is the pdf of the application for certification.

I thought it was $35 to apply for the certification in one jurisdiction and it's a 3 year certification. As I read this...am I wrong? Is it $300 or $550 for a 3 year certification in one jurisdiction?

http://www.epa.gov/lead/pubs/firmapp.pdf

[Timothy W.]

Originally posted by J Scott:
Not to mention, property owners generally aren't the ones who do the renovations! If you're going to require someone to get certified to do this work, at least make it the contractors who are required to get certified, not the property owners.

Actually the contractors are supposed to have been issuing disclosures and certified for anything involving young kids for some time now for the express purpose of disturbing lead based paint. What's changed is they've added property owners and rental property to this, if the property owner does any work to the property.

The exclusions are newer than 1978, if the owner does less than 6 s.f. of repairs and/or preparations, if the tenant does the work or if you get a certified risk assessor to write you a report signing off on it. So if you're just filling nail holes, maybe repairing one door knob hole and then repainting you're fine.

Well we knew stuff like this was coming so it's time to get creative.

[Jason S.]

Unclear as to how this applies to flipping a property.

It specifies that the fee applies to those getting "paid" - if the flipper does his own renovation then the property is not a rental unit nor is the work being done by a contractor. I wonder how this will be applied?

To add a twist - what if the flipper is also a contractor? I guess it depends on if he is paying himself (one entity to another) or not?

Any thoughts?

[Timothy W.]

They specified "rental property". It appears flippers are unaffected.

Very interesting point you make.... Perhaps it's time to revisit land contracts.

[Timothy W.]

Ok I just got a confirmation that it is $300 for the certification fee. This is after paying for the training.

[Paul Strauss]

Do I understand that this was not passed into law, but decreed by executive order?

[Timothy W.]

Yep. Without getting too political about it, this is a common practice when Democrat presidents take office. We can whine and complain about this and what "should" be in the political forum but I'm only going into an "it is what it is" background here.

When Clinton took office the rules changed then as to passing out lead paint pamplets and getting people to sign off on it when they wanted to do any renovations. The only reason no one knew about it the was only contractors were affected and there was no mandatory "licensing" process as costly as this unless you did work to schools and such.

Now the executive order just extended it to property owners, rental properties and made paying for licensing mandatory. I don't think they thought this through in terms of the extent of the reach though. It vagueness by default affects millions upon millions of people with very little direction.

After a couple days of analysis I have personally determined that not a singe renovation I've done in the past 4 years has required me to disturb more than 6 square feet of painted area.

Where it IS going to come into play is if I ever have an insurance claim on a property involving a disturbance of more than 6 square feet of painted area. I used to carry high deductibles on the assumption that I would do the drywall refinish and paint myself in the event of a big claim. This changes that assumption so I'm affected, but not in rennovation. I'm affected in insurance.

[Jason S.]

Remember.

According to the Rule. If you replace 1 window in a pre-1978 home you must comply.

The great part is, at least according to the NAR video, I could not find it in the language of the rule. "Any Citizen has standing" to sue. Gotta love that!

[Jim Wineinger]

Originally posted by Tim Wieneke:
This one is too important for politics and frankly I can't think of anyone on the forum who'd be happy about this. I ran into a problem though.

Everyone look at this link. It is the pdf of the application for certification.

I thought it was $35 to apply for the certification in one jurisdiction and it's a 3 year certification. As I read this...am I wrong? Is it $300 or $550 for a 3 year certification in one jurisdiction?

http://www.epa.gov/lead/pubs/firmapp.pdf

Tim: Revisit the language. The $300.00 is for a FIRM and the application that you linked to is the FIRM application, but the new ruling is for PROPERTY OWNERS who do the work themselves without hiring a FIRM.

Property owners could indeed be firms, especially for large rental units. And the $35.00 fee is Each additional EPA-run "jurisdiction".

No where does it say what the INDIVIDUAL's fee would be!!!!!!!
And homeowners (so far) are exempt for their personal residences.

Does this mean that it might behoove us to have the rentals in our personal names?