Rental property mold and certificates of compliance
Ann Arbor is a majority-rented city with a mandatory inspection cycle, which makes mold here a scheduled expense, not a surprise. The question is whether you pay for it once or every thirty months.
The cycle
Every unit, every thirty months
Ann Arbor operates one of the more thorough rental inspection regimes in the state. The city inspects all rental units within its boundary every 30 months and issues a Certificate of Compliance to properties that pass. The code language behind it is not permissive.
No person shall lease or otherwise make a dwelling or rooming unit available for occupancy if a Certificate of Compliance is not in effect for the unit.City of Ann Arbor · Rental housing, Housing Code chapter 105
Properties also have to be registered and carry a rental license, and where violations are not corrected within the time an inspector gives, the property can be posted as not habitable until they are. For an owner, that is the real exposure. It is not the cost of the repair, but a unit that cannot legally be let while it is outstanding.
With census figures putting owner-occupancy in Ann Arbor at 45.5%, most housing in this city sits inside that cycle. Mold is therefore not an unusual event here; it is a recurring line item on a known schedule, which is a genuinely different planning problem from the one a homeowner has.
The trap
What clears the violation, and what ends the problem
The city's published guidance on what happens when an inspector finds mold is direct, and it is the single most important sentence on this page for a landlord to have read.
If we can physically see the mold, we will contact the owner/agent and require them to bleach and/or use mold killing paint on any surface that will allow.City of Ann Arbor · Rental housing tenant resources
The use of a chemical or biocide that kills organisms like mold (chlorine bleach, for example) is not recommended as a routine practice during mold cleanup… dead mold can still cause allergic reactions in some people. In addition, background mold will continue to grow if moisture is still present.Washtenaw County Health Department · Mold cleanup and removal
Both are correct within their own remit. A rental inspector enforcing habitability needs a corrective action an owner can perform and an inspector can confirm by looking; bleaching and coating a surface meets that test. A health department answering what stops recurrence has to say that a biocide does very little, because the growth was a consequence of water and the water has not moved.
For an owner working to a 30-month clock, the arithmetic is worth doing explicitly. Coating a wall clears the citation now and costs very little. If the moisture is untouched, the same wall is cited at the next inspection, and the one after. Three cycles of that is seven and a half years of repeatedly paying to conceal a defect that could have been repaired once, plus, on any occasion the correction runs past its deadline, a unit that cannot be occupied.
The version that lasts
- Establish the moisture source before agreeing to any cosmetic work, because the source decides whether this is a $200 downspout or a below-grade repair, and nothing else can tell you which.
- Remove the porous material rather than coating it. Drywall, insulation, carpet and pad that have been wet and are growing come out; there is no method for cleaning the back of an installed board.
- Do the correction the inspector asked for as well. The citation is answered by what the city asked for, and the two are not in conflict, since you are doing the repair and satisfying the record.
- Keep the paperwork. A written scope naming the moisture source, the area in square feet and the materials removed is what makes the next inspection short, and it is the same document that helps if a tenant raises it later.
- Deal with tenant reports in writing and promptly. Tenants here are pointed at the county on 734-222-3800 and at the city's inspection service, and a documented response to a complaint is a materially better position than an undocumented one.
Student lets
The occupancy pattern makes it worse
A large share of Ann Arbor's rental stock runs on an academic year, and the usage pattern that comes with it is unhelpful for moisture in three specific ways.
Occupancy is dense relative to the size of the unit, which raises indoor humidity: more people, more showers, more cooking, more laundry in the same volume of air. Bathroom fans in older converted houses frequently discharge somewhere they should not, and nobody living there for eight months has any reason to investigate. And the buildings sit empty over the summer, which is exactly when a Michigan basement runs at its most humid, with nobody present to notice a smell developing or to run a dehumidifier.
The result is a turnover inspection in August finding something that started in June. The cheap countermeasures are unglamorous: confirm every exhaust fan actually terminates outdoors, leave a dehumidifier on a humidistat in the basement over the vacant months, and look at the property once mid-summer instead of discovering it at changeover with a new lease starting in three weeks.
Straight answers
Landlord questions
My tenant says there is mold. What am I obliged to do?
We are not able to give you legal advice and this is a question where the specifics matter, so the useful answer is procedural rather than legal. The city's inspection service handles habitability under the Housing Code and the county health department handles environmental health questions on 734-222-3800; a tenant can involve either.
Responding in writing, arranging an inspection promptly and keeping a record of what was found and done is the position you want to be in. It is also the cheapest route, because a moisture problem found early is a smaller repair than one found by an inspector two years later.
Can I do the work myself between tenants?
For a patch under about 10 square feet, the county's guidance applies to you the same as to anyone, and it publishes the method. Above that, and particularly where drywall is coming out, there is a licensing question worth knowing about: under MCL 339.2401(a) residential work is exempt below $600 in labor and materials, and above that the rebuild needs a Residential Builder or Maintenance and Alteration license from LARA. Mold removal itself is not licensed in Michigan. Putting the wall back is.
Should I test before the inspector arrives?
Almost certainly not. Both offices you are dealing with have publicly declined to route people toward testing. The city says it cannot test nor recommend anyone to test, and the county says in most cases it is not necessary because there is no standard to compare a result against. A test result does not clear a citation. Finding and fixing the water does.
The inspection is in a few weeks. Is there time to do this properly?
Often yes, because the moisture repair is frequently smaller than people brace for: extending a downspout, clearing a window well, ducting a bath fan to the outside. What takes time is the discovery, so the sequence that fits a short window is to get the survey booked immediately and let the findings decide the rest.
If the repair genuinely cannot be completed in time, having a written scope and a scheduled date is a materially better thing to show an inspector than a freshly painted wall and no explanation.
Is there anything worth doing between tenants?
Two things, and both are cheap. Follow every exhaust fan and the dryer vent to where they actually terminate, because a duct discharging into a soffit, an attic or a crawl space is the most common preventable moisture source in this housing stock and nobody living there for eight months will ever notice.
Then leave a dehumidifier on a humidistat in the basement over the vacant summer months. An empty house in a Michigan August is the exact condition that produces the smell somebody reports in September.
The unit is a pre-1978 building. Does that change anything?
It can change the job substantially. Disturbing painted surfaces in housing of that age brings federal lead-safe renovation requirements into play, and older insulation and floor materials raise asbestos questions handled by a different agency again. Neither is a mold rule, and both can govern how the mold work is carried out. It is much better established before demolition starts than during it.
Start with a survey, not a sales visit
Ask about a rental
If an inspector has already written it up, the report itself is the most useful thing to describe: what was cited, which unit, and what date the correction is due by. If nothing has been cited yet and you are getting ahead of it, say that instead.
Related work we arrange
What rental work connects to
Mold inspection and moisture diagnosis
Finding the water before pricing the repair. Washtenaw County’s own position is that in most cases sampling is not necessary, which makes the visual survey the thing you are actually buying.
Basement and crawl space mold
Where most Ann Arbor mold lives. A below-grade wall can be wet from outside, wet from condensation, or wet from a leak, and the three want completely different repairs.
Attic mold and roof ventilation
Usually a ventilation fault rather than a roof leak. A bath fan discharging into the attic puts warm wet air against a cold roof deck every night of a Michigan winter.
Water damage drying and material removal
The 48-hour window the EPA sets for drying wet building materials, and which porous materials have to come out rather than be dried in place.