Meth labs can be found anywhere ... even here
by Michael Murphy

NORTH VALLEY – The well‑scrubbed neighborhoods popping up in the North Valley are the last places you’d expect to find a meth lab. But real estate experts say that’s just where you might find one.

“They’re all over,” said Michelle Lind, general counsel for the Arizona Association of Realtors. “Meth labs have been run out of extremely nice neighborhoods, and extremely nice houses. It’s not just the lower‑end properties.”

It’s the home seller’s responsibility to ensure the house has been “remediated,” or thoroughly cleaned up by a company certified by the Arizona State Board of Technical Registration.

Once it’s been certified as “clean,” then it’s up to the seller to disclose the home’s meth lab past.

Longtime Cave Creek Realtor Martha Arnold once had to disclose that a murder occurred at a property she was listing. But she has yet to deal with the meth lab issue. Her response, though, is the same.

“The bottom line to everything is disclose, disclose, disclose,” she said. “Living in a small town, if you don’t fully disclose everything you know, the neighbors are going to tell the buyer.”

Anthem real estate broker Doug Clark gives his clients the same advice.

“As a broker, I’ve always told my people if you happen to list a home that had meth usage, you’d better disclose it totally,” he said. “You want your sellers to disclose everything pertinent to the property–because if it’s not, the buyers would say, ‘I wouldn’t have bought the house if I would have know its history.’”

Law enforcement and public health officials in recent years have said meth use in the U.S. has reached epidemic proportions and is taking a financial toll on the criminal justice system, health care and social services agencies.

The highly addictive, illegal drug is manufactured in clandestine “labs” and is composed of a mix of household chemicals and pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in over‑the‑counter cold medications.

According to law enforcement, the number of new meth labs found in residences has been declining because more of the drug is coming from Mexico, and new laws making it harder to buy medicine containing pseudoephedrine have helped to reduce the prevalence of meth labs.

Arizona’s methamphetamine lab disclosure law has been in effect since 2002, when then Attorney General Janet Napolitano championed efforts to crack down on meth production in the state.

Remediation, or cleaning up a house, can cost a homeowner up to $15,000, but it’s the price sellers have to pay under the law to obtain a certificate that the house is “clean.”

“There have been meth arrests in some very high‑end neighborhoods, so you can’t universally say the arrest is going to reduce the value of the property,” Lind said.