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Tim Upton
  • Contractor
  • Portsmouth, NH
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MA Lead Paint Abatement - Options and Costs - HELP

Tim Upton
  • Contractor
  • Portsmouth, NH
Posted Mar 20 2018, 11:22

My wife and I recently bought a large (3,000sf), unoccupied two family in northern Massachusetts. I'll round the numbers for the purpose of this discussion but basically we paid $440k for the property and have a planned reno budget of $100k. The actually reno will cost around $90k and we held on to the rest as a small contingency/change order fund. Given the location of the property and the town, it's a great property for tenants with young families. 

The property was constructed in 1906 so there's likely lead paint on at least one of the 3 floors of the building (although nothing has been officially tested). We're willing to spend a chunk of change to have the lead abated and get a lead cert just to avoid any gray area regarding tenants with young children. However, the costs we've been quoted seem very high. Having a hygienist come in and test is step one and that'll run us about $700. Then, assuming lead is detected, we need to have an abatement company come in. Once they abate any lead they find, they need to clean the ENTIRE building in order to provide a clean air cert. We've been told the abatement/cleaning will cost a minumum of $10k but likely closer to $25k. 

My question for anyone out there that has been in this position before is - what are our options? We want to be responsible landlords and see value in having a Delead Cert on file. It could've been an oversight on our part but we did not expect the deleading costs to be close to 25% of our total reno cost! It would be cheaper to replace all the doors/door jambs, window sills, etc rather than go with the deleading process described above. But according to the abatement contractors we've talked to, they cautioned us against demoing all the expected lead materials and installing new. The mentioned potential fines and told us even if we did demo/replace ourselves then we'd still need a lead test at the end of the reno to get a lead cert and if we missed even one spot they'd need to abate and clean the whole house, leading us back to square one. 

What're our legal options here? I mean, I know what the MA gov website recommends but is it actually common practice to spend that kind of money on every rental property you purchase that has lead in it? Any help, advice, resources, etc would be greatly appreciated. We spent over a year looking for this property and nailed the reno budget in every other aspect, but if we have to spend $25k on lead abatement then that will wipe out over a year's worth of CF....

How do you guys handle lead paint in your rentals?

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