DENVER, Colorado — A Curtis Park row home was listed for $800,000 until an inspection found high levels of methamphetamine contamination. It came as a surprise to neighbors who said they never knew their now-deceased neighbor to use meth.
When the 12-year-old, three-bedroom home came back on the market it was listed for $500,000 in anticipation of an investor gutting and flipping it. It recently sold for $450,000, according to property records, and the interior has been torn down to the studs.
“It’s a really nice townhome. So I can’t imagine the remodel is going to be under $200,000,” said real estate investor Tim Walker, who made an offer on the home but was just short of the selling price.
Walker said he’s flipped a meth-contaminated property before. His flip had such a high level of contamination that even the studs had to be sanded down.
The Curtis Park property located on 28th Street had extremely high levels of contamination, too. Every room in the home had some level of contamination, but the master bedroom had levels 2,000 times the limit deemed safe by the state, records show.
“The allowable limit for methamphetamine is about a Splenda packet sprinkled over a football field,” Walker said.
That’s a problem for the neighboring row homes that are connected to the house that just sold. According to state records, neighbors on either side of the property ordered an inspection of their own, revealing much smaller, but significant levels of methamphetamine in the HVAC and air ducts. Some of the vents lead to bedrooms.
Neither of the neighbors could be reached for comment, but the reports completed by state-certified inspectors show that affected personal property could probably be, simply, wiped down with soap and water by a professional cleaning crew. A contractor will have to examine the affected HVAC systems to determine how to properly clean them.
The state doesn't keep data on how often homes are reported contaminated, but one inspector told 9NEWS that he’s frequently doing five methamphetamine contamination inspections a day.
Meth use has exploded in Colorado. Overdose deaths have jumped 750 percent in the last decade, and records show 318 people died of a meth overdose last year alone. The drug can be powerful, even when simple residue is hidden on the surfaces of homes, which is why this home is getting a makeover just 12 years after being built.
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