Foreclosed Home Loaded With Toxic Mold; Note Left By Former Owner Tips Off Unwitting Buyer

WYFF-TV Channel 4 reports the story of a Greenville, South Carolina home that was so loaded with toxic mold and that made one of the then-homeowners and her two young daughters so sick, doctors told them to leave the home immediately. After discovering the toxic mold and after what the doctors told them, the family, with no money in savings to have the mold removed, stopped paying their mortgage and let the home go into foreclosure.

Prior to the bank taking ownership of the home, and under the belief that some unwitting homeowner down the road would end up in the same shoes he found himself in, homeowner George Leventis wrote a note warning of the mold problem contained in the home and left the note inside "a secret room" behind a bookshelf in the hope that the note would be found by a new homebuyer.

• "I put it in the room because I didn't want anyone to find it if it was left out in the house. I figured if someone else who had another interest or a stake in the house found it, they would just throw it away or they wouldn't tell anyone," Leventis said.

As fate would have it, the note went undetected by the foreclosing lender, who took ownership of the home in foreclosure, or the real estate brokerage and sales agent who sold the home to the new homebuyers, also parents with a young child, who ultimately discovered the note after taking title to the home.

The new homeowners filed a lawsuit against the real estate brokerage, the sales agent, and the mortgage lender, Fannie Mae. Reportedly, Fannie Mae agreed to buy back the home for the original selling price of $75,000 and will be dropped from the lawsuit. The litigation against the brokerage and the sales agent continues. For more, see Hidden Room, Hidden Danger.

Go here to view the WYFF-TV Channel 4 video report.

Go here to read the mold warning note left by the prior homeowner.