How hard is selling a house with mold? Let’s put it this way: How many of you would buy a house that has a 21 percent chance of giving you or a family member asthma?

Or one that had anywhere from a 30 to 50 percent chance of giving you not only asthma but also one of a whole variety of respiratory disorders.

I didn’t think so. Not only are we in real estate, but we are nurses as well. Believe me, when you’ve watched patients suffer from respiratory ailments, you’d do anything you could to prevent others from getting these exacerbation of symptoms.

According to two EPA studies, though, building mold and dampness can increase your likelihood of having asthma or another respiratory disease by those exact percentages. That’s why selling a house with mold is a tough sell at best; at worst, it puts your buyers at risk for health issues. Better yet, if you know about mold in your house you have a duty to disclose to the Buyer.

Yes, household chlorine bleach can remove some of the external signs of mold. However, the insidious nature of mold is its ability to spread, unbeknownst to homeowners.

Even if you douse the tiles around your bathtub and that nasty area behind your toilet with chlorine bleach every week, the real damage goes on behind the scenes. Mold can get into little cracks you can’t even see, traveling behind the walls to grow unimpeded.

Not only that, but black mold — the most dangerous kind of house mold — can grow unseen on your fine hardwood floors, behind your wallpaper, and even on that pricey fiberboard siding. Other types of mold prefer to grow in your insulation, drywall, carpeting, and window frames.

Spaces without adequate ventilation or ones with excess humidity are the most vulnerable to mold infestations. Your bathrooms, basement, crawlspace, and attic are all vulnerable, especially if you don’t have adequate ventilation.

Here in Jacksonville FL, the humidity and heat provide area houses with nearly the perfect environment to grow mold. And, if it’s been growing for a while, it can even threaten the structural integrity of your house.

No buyer wants that. If it’s in your house, few buyers will chance making an offer on yours.

It’s not impossible to sell a house with mold, but you’ll have to shell out some major money for mold remediation for potential buyers to qualify for a loan. Let’s face it — most potential buyers won’t be able to make a cash offer once they know there is mold in your home.

To sell it, you’ll either have to lose a lot of money on remediation or even worse, losing more money tearing it down and selling the lot.

Mold remediation requires a lot more than a “spray and pray” approach. You might even need to completely revamp your house’s ventilation system, particularly in areas that attract moisture, such as bathrooms, laundries, and kitchens.

Not only that, but you might even need to replace drywall and wallpaper and then paint over it with mold-resistant paint. It gets worse if the mold is underneath a vulnerable exterior, such as stucco or fiberboard.

The only way to get rid of it is by killing the current infestation with potent fungicides and preventing new infestations by replacing the damaged areas. Then, you’ll need to document the mold remediation and confirm that you have taken care of the problem with a home inspection.