Date Published: 02/16/2020 [Source]
Upon contract acceptance on a home, a buyer generally has a period of time in which to conduct their due diligence and have any inspections preformed that they may feel necessary. In the past few years, radon testing in our community has become normal. I have been involved with several transactions recently in which higher than acceptable levels of radon have been found in a home being sold.
You may ask what is radon? According to the EPA, radon is a cancer causing, radioactive gas that comes from the natural breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water, and gets into the air we breathe. The EPA estimates that radon causes thousands of cancer deaths in the U.S. each year. To find out more about radon you can download an information sheet entitled "Home Buyer and Seller's Guide to Radon" online.
If you are in the market to buy a home, you should consider a radon test. If you elect to have a radon test and find that there are elevated levels of the gas it doesn't mean the world is coming to an end. At that point, if you are still within the inspection period you can ask the seller to mitigate the presence of the gas and the seller has the option of agreeing or not. Should they elect not to have the radon mitigated, you can then cancel the contract or move ahead with the purchase and have the radon taken care of yourself after the home is yours. You can also elect to disregard the presence of radon however I would not recommend it.