You do not have to share your Phase I findings with the seller, so if it winds up being relatively free of potential soil and ground water pollution or contamination, you may be able to get a below market deal. 

I realize that i wont be living there but it is a concern about contamination.

If not, he stated that he could do a "sweep" for $250 that would identify if there is an underground tank with contaminated soil.

He got caught, the materials are all co-mingled, and they now all have to be considered as contaminated with asbestos, even the sandstone which is extremely heavy.  

I am looking forward to meeting all of you at some point.Julie Marquez - I am an environmental engineer, with an emphasis on water policy, water regulations and permitting, contaminated site cleanup and stormwater management.   

Even with the inspections, there is still a waiting period for using it for something other than a gas station, just because of the unknowns of gas vapors and potential soil contaminants. 

However, when one goes badly, it can be very expensive - hence the reason to spend $500 - $1K upfront to determine if you have contamination or not.If you find a mess, walk away and the lender/bank will have to disclose - in some jurisdictions they may have to remediate before they can sell.

If you're going to spring a claim of a environmental contamination on the seller, you're going to have to, IMHO, provide some sort of third party validation to support the claim.

SFH isolates bad tenants, so they don't contaminate the other tenants.The popular slogan here on BP is that more doors is better.

Here buildings of more than 4-units are also required to have backflow prevention on the water supply into the building (so you cannot contaminate the water supply).