The Secret in The Secret Room at 6 Whitten Street


When Jason & Keri Brown, the buyers of 6 Whitten Street in Greenville, South Carolina, discovered a secret room behind a bookshelf they were surprised. When they walked in, they were horrified by their discovery. It was all revealed in the mysterious handwritten note: “You Found It!” The note went on:

“Hello. If you’re reading this, then you found the secret room. I owned this house for a short while and it was discovered to have a serious mold problem. One that actually made my children very sick to the point that we had to move out.”

But it was not just any mold. It was the Stachybotrys mold, also known as “Toxic Black Mold“, which can cause respiratory bleeding in infants. The Browns, who have a young daughter, could not live in the house. They filed suit against the broker and agent, who denied knowing about the secret room or the toxic mold. They said the buyers bought the house “as is”.

The Browns did a home inspection but, like most standard home inspections, it did not include a mold inspection.

The lesson to homebuyers: get a mold inspection as part of your home inspection and make sure your contract of sale contains a clause that the house is free of any mold.

Source: WYFF4, Greenvile News.

Related Posts:

12 Mold Facts for First Time Home Buyers

10 Steps to Handle Mold Issues When Buying or Selling Your First Home

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8 Responses to “The Secret in The Secret Room at 6 Whitten Street”


  1. 1 The Real Estate Estate Schmoozer! Jan 8th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    Phew!!

    I’m glad it was only mold they found there!

    They’re lucky they didn’t find the secret nursery like on the Adult Baby episode of CSI.

    Talk about strange, this is it:

    http://www.babyapparels.com/

  2. 2 Miss Marlow Jan 9th, 2008 at 6:01 am

    Mold is all around us, every day, in all the air we breathe. In anything but a desert-type of environment, it’s impossible to keep a home and the air “mold-free”.

  3. 3 Ken Montville Jan 9th, 2008 at 8:47 am

    Stachybotrys mold is certainly bad news and intentional concealment and cover up of the mold sounds like solid grounds for legal action to me.

    Of course, everyone goes after the Realtor but this sounds like it’s clear cut that the previous owners knew and deliberately avoided disclosure which would have meant expensive mold remediation and, most likely, selling at a much lower price.

    Re: home inspections. Even if a specific mold inspection wasn’t used the home inspector should have been able to find the secret room. After all, the new owners did. That’s who they should go after.

  4. 4 Katie Jan 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    Makes you wonder what else the seller did not disclose about the condition of the property. This was complete deception by the seller.

  5. 5 rod Feb 10th, 2008 at 1:01 am

    I agree with with Ken. AS a Home inspector myself, Making a mental note of what the outside of the structure looks like would have been a signal as to what the interior should be like. I probley would have found the room (maybe) but atleast known there was space that could not be accessed. Yes, mold inspections are out of the scope of an home inspection. I do feel the old owners should be sued. And the realtor?… well depends if he/she knew the room was there.

  6. 6 bditty Jul 19th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    look up the original article. it was a foreclosure. the owner put the note in the hidden room so that once it was found the new owners would know it to be mold. the former owners reasoning was that if the note was left on a counter, a realtor would throw it away because it interfered with business and disclosure would prevent the house from being sold… which is exactly what happened. it was a bank that sold the house, not the owner. one would expect the bank to send an inspector to a house.

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