Mold in your apartment or rental home can feel like a nightmare—how you handle the conversation with your landlord makes all the difference. In this episode, Daniel Stih shares practical guidance for tenants and landlords navigating mold problems:
- What to say—and what NOT to say—to your landlord if you find mold
- Common mistakes tenants make that can derail getting help
- Smart steps for landlords to protect their property and avoid liability
- Why involving the right experts matters
Daniel cuts through the confusion, giving you the real-world strategies you need to handle mold disputes calmly, professionally, and effectively—without getting lost in scientific jargon or legal red tape.
Whether you’re a renter worried about your health—or a landlord trying to do the right thing—this episode is your mold crisis game plan.
The Mold Money Podcast
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Rent Money - The Toxic Mold Handbook for Tenants and Landlords by Daniel Stih https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Money-Handbook-Tenants-Landlords/dp/1736585622
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
I'm going to talk to you about what to do if you find mold in your home or your apartment, how to talk to your landlord, and if your landlord, how to talk to your tenant, what to do, what not to do, what to say, what not to say, and why.
If you're a renter and you're frustrated, feel helpless because you found mold, might be your landlord had it tested and told you, good news.
The tester said it's not a harmful mold that releases spores and it can be cleaned up with 3% hydrogen peroxide and painted with a special paint.
And according to our maintenance department, if the mold is an area 3 square feet or less, we can treat it with chemicals and paint over it per the EPA guidelines. This is all incorrect.
If you're a landlord, you might worry what it's going to cost to get rid of the mold. You might wonder if you should even believe the tenants or if they're trying to get out of the lease.
Maybe you're a good person, you want to do the right thing, get rid of the mold, but you're not really sure what needs to be done or if there is mold. Whether you're a tenant or a landlord, you probably try to get advice from an expert.
A lot of this is not helpful, non-productive. Everyone seems to have an opinion and experts vary in what they say so much. It's difficult for a lay person to know what's true and not.
My goal with today's podcast and my book, which focuses on this topic, Rent Money, Your Handbook to Dealing with Mold. In a rental situation, my goal is to bring common sense to this issue that's brought with disinformation. So let's get started.
How do you handle a mold discovery? Here's what a landlord should and should not do and say. If a tenant tells you they see mold, go and look.
Don't skip to talking about testing. Go and look and smell. Ask the tenant to simply show you what they think is mold.
If it looks like mold, it probably is. There's no need to test it. You can skip to remediation.
Remember what I told you previously. Don't say, can we just spray it with bleach? I'll send my maintenance over.
That's not appropriate. If you're not sure if what the tenant thinks is mold is actually mold, then you need to test it. And you can do this yourself.
You don't need to call a home inspector or a mold tester. Ask the tenant to be there so they can be satisfied.
You are there collecting samples from what they think is mold and not someplace else, so that when you get the answer, they believe it, they know it was taken where they thought they saw mold. Here's what not to do if the tenant says they see mold.
Do not say, I'll send my handyman over to look at it. The exception is if there's an active leak. The leak needs to be repaired immediately.
But your maintenance people are not mold inspectors. And you're also putting your maintenance department in a difficult position and assuming a lot of liability for that. Just don't do it.
What to do if a tenant says they smell mold? Odor may or may not be mold. Could be sewer gas, a dead animal, a gas leak.
Could be mold, could just be dampness. Get a moisture meter, check the walls and the floor and the area where the tenant says they smell mold. If you find a damp area and it smells like mold, it probably is mold.
If you want to determine if it's mold causing the odor, you can't see it, it's in the wall, then you're going to need a mold inspector that knows how to collect wall cavity air samples using the method called the wall check.
Not all mold inspectors know how or will do one of the wall checks. Cutting a hole is not the idea because if there's mold, the tenants are going to tell you now you made a mess and spread mold all over my house, which is kind of true.
Ambient air testing, spore traps is not appropriate. If you smell it, you can have mold in the wall. Your air samples don't detect it.
Now armed with that as a landlord, you're likely to say, look, air samples are good. That implies that there's no health effects or that the air is always good.
It's only good at that moment and only good according to what those spore traps say, not what if we did a wall check or more advanced air testing would say. So, don't take air samples just because you smell something.
Do the wall check, get the moisture meter. More what not to do if the tenant says they smell mold. Don't tell them you have too good a nose, you're too sensitive, or no one else complains.
I can't tell you how many people, both tenants and landlords, when I smell something, they can't smell it. It's kind of like hearing. People don't seem to have as good a sense of smell or hearing these days.
Don't say you just have too good a nose. What to do if a tenant says they tested for Mold?
Ask for a copy of the report, because the following are completely not valid ways of testing, and if you're a tenant, you're wasting your time, they won't hold up in court. They're not accurate at all.
Settling plates, the kind you get at Lowe's, Home Depot, Amazon, and Just Leave Out, totally junk science, and the ERME test, not valid because of the way it interprets the results, and also the PCR, which sounds like a great DNA test.
Laboratory potential for laboratory errors, more importantly, what's the baseline? What does it mean? What are you comparing it to?
And that's not useful. The only thing that is useful, you see mold, a tape lift, not a swab. When you swab something, you mash everything up, and you make it harder for the lab to actually see what you see, a tape lift, for visible mold.
If the mold is hidden, you can't see it, a wall cavity air samples. And finally, air samples might be valid, only as the very last step, you test the wall, there's no mold, you don't see mold, you're just trying to do what we call a risk assessment.
You gotta spend about $1,000 in lab fees. If you just have a few spore traps taken, that's not really conclusive. What not to do if a tenant says they tested for mold, so the tenant brings you lab results.
Don't respond first to, well, what kind of mold is it? You know, they only say certain types of mold are toxic. Is it the Stachybotrys?
I can't believe how many people still ask that question. Or think that's the most important thing to know. It's gonna detect mold, and yes, of course it's gonna tell you what kind.
When you get focused on that, you're losing track of what's important, which is your mold.
And the reason is, if you see black mold, and it turns out that it's Altenaria or something, and not the Stachybotrys, how do you know you don't have the Stachybotrys inside the wall hidden someplace?
You can never know that you don't have a certain type of mold just because you only see one kind. So that's why it's logically not a good thing to do. You could still have another type.
Point is, do you have mold for a tenant now? If you are the renter, what you should and should not say. If you see mold, here's what you do.
You don't need to test it. If your landlord agrees there's mold, the next step is to agree on what we're going to do about it, how to remove it, what's the standard, who are we going to hire and pay to do it? Can I stay here?
Should I move out? Here's what to do if you're a tenant and you think you smell mold, but don't see mold. You need an inspection.
It will be helpful if you can tell the mold inspector, where it is, that you think smells like mold. That would be a place to have them do the wall cavity air test. So maybe before you hire one, ask them, can you do wall cavity air samples?
Because I don't see mold and I do not want to pay for ambient spore traps. One, it won't tell me for sure there's not mold. And if there is, it won't tell me where it is.
Part of the reason a professional mold remediation is expensive is containment. The area with the mold is going to be contained. And then it's technically safe to occupy the building while the remediation is going on.
Do you want to do that? How can we minimize the amount of money spent and get this done in an efficient manner, which is what as a landlord, the landlord is going to be really focused on.
You want to pay for a good job and only what you need, nothing more. So it is true you can save money by hiring a general contractor or your maintenance department.
You can't have a contractor do the work while the unit's occupied because a contractor or your maintenance department doesn't have an air scrubber or know how to use it properly.
What you could do is have a remediation company come over, set up the equipment, and then have your general contractor do the work or your maintenance department, and then have the mold remediation company come back and take down their air scrubber
and containment. Of course, they might not do that right either, and you spent money and it's not done right. Your contractor is going to make a mess basically and spread not just mold, but dust all around the place.
And next thing you know, the tenant could be asking you to pay to clean all their stuff or throw it all out and that gets to be quite complicated and expensive. We don't really want to go there.
So tenants, after your landlord spends thousands of dollars on remediation, you're going to have a difficult time telling them it wasn't done effectively. So help them make sure it is. Help them get a good company and do the right thing.
No chemicals, cut out the mold, clean it up properly, do containment properly. It's up to you to learn how to do that. My observation is it doesn't matter how big the pockets, sooner or later all of a sudden they're empty.
And I've seen staggering amounts of money wasted on remediation companies doing the wrong thing, and there's no money left to do the right thing.
If you're a renter, if a landlord hires a professional to remove it, consider it's going to be some time before the job is done. Because the first step is to get an estimate.
That means you're going to have to live there through the estimate to the work's done. Do you have allergies? Can you tolerate the noise?
What if they use chemicals, creates new odors? If you choose to stay, you're not breaking your lease, you're not moving out your stand. Cover your stuff.
Put your stuff, as much stuff, into boxes, cardboard boxes, and put them into closets and seal closets with tape. Pack things away so they don't get dirty, especially your clothes.
And cover the big items, like your mattress with the plastic sheeting and tape, even if the bedrooms are not part of the work area. Minimizing the cost.
Getting a cheap mold inspection can add an extra layer of difficulty to an already unpleasant situation. If there's hidden mold and the inspector doesn't find it, they're going to write a report, there's no mold or only mold in these areas.
And what if the odor is coming from the area, they say there's no mold. And then a landlord may tell a tenant, quit complaining, I have a report, I know where there is mold and not mold, here's what I'm going to do.
And then a tenant has to go hire their own inspector to investigate further. And if they find mold, it becomes a tug of war. So each party is going to want to believe their inspector and their reports correct.
And the worst of these reads goes to litigation. So tenants, you want to hire and pay for the inspector. Landlords, pay your tenants back if the inspector finds mold, but let them do their own testing.
Then the liability, the responsibility is theirs. And if you dispute what they find, you could go hire your own. That does happen.
This is the point of if your tenant makes sure you get a good one, not just one that agrees with you. I've been on both sides. Quite often, quite obvious, there's mold.
And the tenant's right. I've also seen where the tenant is completely wrong. It's not mold, and they still don't believe me.
And no matter what the landlord does, then we can't fix it, of course, because it's not mold. I've seen cases where the landlord, property management, calls me because they know there's mold.
They don't want the person living there while they remediate it. And the tenant won't move out, even though I show them it's mold. Most of the time, most of the mold is not visible until remediation begins.
So, tenants, before remediation begins, before you agree to continue renting, instead of asking to get out of your lease, it's also recommended that you require the landlord to have post-verification testing performed.
Many think this is a waste of money. It looks clean. It is clean.
I've had property management companies, contractors, building contractors who are actually responsible for the mold, and I'm trying to be kind, and go, you know, it looks good to me. Do I really need to do post-remediation verification for you guys?
It's going to cost another thousand dollars. And like, yes, there have been times when it still comes back with mold. That's why we do it.
So no matter how clean it looks, the right thing to do is test it before you rebuild and before you move on. Otherwise, if you smell it again, or you're not sure it's gone, you think you get sick again, you got to start all over.
And then nobody wants to take apart what they just took apart and rebuild it, wasting money. A few last things about going to court.
I recommend if you're a landlord, you make friends with the tenant, offer to give them their deposit back, and part ways friendly, can maybe consider having them sign something that says you're not liable for any health effects or any contents after
they leave, it's a clean cut. Tenants, in a small claims court, a judge is probably not going to want to hear about health effects, your stuff, and maybe not even the mold as much.
They're trying to wrap their head around a part in the law, a part in the lease agreement that's black and white, a tenant landlord law that's been violated. The mold is too complex for a magistrate or a lower level court.
Health effects go to the federal court. If you're a landlord, if you keep the deposit, make sure you give the tenant a line item list of expenses within the time period required by law.
Don't think, oh, you just trashed my place, grew mold because of you. I'm not giving you any of your money back and cut off communication, because then the judge will find, oh, you didn't give them their deposit back in time for these line items.
And the judge is going to find for the tenant, even if the tenant made a mess of your house with the mold. If the tenant says their health is damaged, the case is going to go to a higher court.
I've had the same attorneys tell me they can argue both ways. There's no way to prove you got sick from mold. The same ones will win cases for it.
It depends on how you argue it. Mold can cause health effects. All depends on what kind of expert you get.
I also do expert witness testimony. It's kind of common sense just cutting through the nonsense. What's the right and wrong way to do things as we're speaking about today?
If you want to learn more, including if you're a tenant, what to do to find a rental that doesn't have mold before you sign a lease.
Or if you are a landlord and you want to know your, take your little handbook around you so you know what to do and say and make your life a lot easier. Pick up a copy of my book, Rent Money, from amazon.com. Thanks for listening.
If you need help, I'm available for consultations. Contact me through healthylivingspaces.com in the show notes. Next time, I'm going to tell you what to do and not to do and what to say and not to say with your insurance company.
Before I go real quick, commercial buildings, big office buildings, government buildings, libraries, schools, no different than what we just spoke about. And the leases are bigger.
If you happen to be a manager or landlord of a big building like that, my recommendation is to keep the process open. Share the information with everybody.
If it's a large enough company, organization, they usually have a meeting room, like a little theater, a big theater. Put an announcement to everybody. Today, we're going to share the testing report.
If you don't share, then rumors start. And they're not good rumors. If you share, people quickly, number one, they build trust, and they start to lose interest.
Whereas once there was all this mythical, hearsay information floating around that made everything sound bad, people just lose interest, give up, and you solve the problem. You find the problem and you share the reports.
But lacking facts are left to the creative imaginations and gossip. If you keep things open, share every, every, everything, never hide anything, just tell the truth.
I know landlords panic over okay, the bad, but the truth is half of the stuff, when people complain, they make a long list of complaints and half of them usually aren't true.
Some of them are even the occupants, related to what their activities are, what they're bringing to work, what they're doing. So keep the communication open and same thing if you need help, I am available for consultations.
Till next time, thanks for listening. I'm Daniel Stih