GROW-OPS: IT'S TIME FOR A ONE-STOP B.C. REGISTRY

As British Columbia approaches the one-year anniversary of its
licensing of home inspectors, it's a good idea to address one
significant area of home inspection that can fall between the cracks
of the province's newly regulated home inspection industry: grow-ops.

Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor-General Kash Heed, in a
letter to the editor in the Jan. 15 edition of The Vancouver Sun
about a consumer who had unknowingly purchased a house that had been
used as a grow-op, said, "The changes we made have helped to make
sure inspectors are qualified, but buyers still have a responsibility
to do their homework to make sure the homes they are interested in
are a good investment ... a home inspection is designed to alert them
of potential issues, but is not a guarantee."

Home inspectors are used when consumers are considering buying a home
and want to make an informed decision.

The home inspection itself is a comprehensive visual examination of
the home's overall structure, major systems, components and property
conditions. The idea is to minimize the risk because no one wants to
face serious unexpected costs.

Probably the most devastating unexpected cost after a purchase would
arise from a discovery that the house was once a grow-op or drug lab.
The consequences of such a discovery -- massive remediation and its
attendant financial, emotional and health devastation -- would be
every homebuyer's nightmare.

And yet, with an increasing percentage of B.C. real estate properties
having been used as grow-ops, prospective purchasers face some real threats.

With no publicly accessible, one-stop provincewide registry of
identified grow-ops, the message to those who choose to disguise a
home's grow-op history is that if you can fool a visual inspection,
you're in the clear. Consumers deserve more than that. It's time we
made better use of our front line of defence provided by "first
responders" -- the police who find the grow-ops.

But that's only part of it. Police admit many grow-ops are never found.

Often after one crop, these houses are dumped back on the market. If
the grow-op seller avoids detection by neighbours and police, is
handy with paintbrush and hammer to disguise the damage and dishonest
in filling out the disclosure statement, the last line of defence is
the visual inspection.

If the potential buyer engages a home inspector to perform that
visual inspection, that inspector cannot damage the home. The idea of
a home inspection with carpets torn up and holes punched in walls is a myth.

So what can be done to protect consumers? We need to take advantage
of that all-important information available at the front line in the
fight against drugs: which houses are involved. Canadian Association
of Home and Property Inspectors (BC) has proposed to a range of
agencies and organizations the development of a one-stop provincewide
registry of identified grow-ops and drug labs to ensure awareness of
their existence and remediation of them before they can re-enter the
"fit-for-habitation" market.

If a building has been revealed as a grow-op, consumers should have
access to that information and whether or not remediation has occurred.

At the same time, CAHPI(BC)'s grow-op-recognition training in our
education sessions with all CAHPI(BC) home inspectors is constantly evolving.

Five years ago, we launched an initiative that saw us travel
throughout the province delivering presentations on how to recognize
the signs of a grow-op.

Building on that effort, we are assessing our examination process and
our standards of practice as they relate to the grow-op issue. The
more individuals able to identify and required to report a property
as a grow-op -- from police, to trades, to all involved in real
estate transactions -- the less risk to the consumer.

Reducing risk is why consumers should know the warning signs a house
may have been a grow-op. These include:

- - Holes or patches in the ceiling in odd places or a drywall patch
close to electrical services.

- - Painted-over staple marks, or evidence of plastics stapled.

- - Disconnected toilet or furnace air and exhaust ducts.

- - Extraneous ductwork or a pile of unused duct pipe.

- - Caulking or sealant on interior floors, walls, or ceilings.

These indicators do not mean a house must have been used as a
grow-op, but they do mean you need to ask questions. The better
informed we all are, the less risk to all of us.