Learn How To Protect Yourself, Your Family And Your Home

Hey, it's Mark Twelfs here. The Land Geek is your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's podcast, we're going to have a story that if you are flipping houses, wholesaling houses, it's going to really give you something to think about. If you're not in housing, it's going to make you so grateful that you don't have to deal with this issue. So Scott Todd is off today. He's either flying or he's on his yacht. I don't know what he's doing, but he's not with us. So today's guest is Kathy McCarty and Kathy is the owner of Meth Toxins Awareness alliance. And after a 30 plus year career as an executive in lending and banking and raising our family in Evergreen, Kathy experienced a serious health event. So while focusing on her recovery, she decided to temporarily rent out her family home to help offset the metal costs that she contracted with. And she contracted with a local property management company who installed a tenant while Kathy focused on her health in rebuilding her career. Kathy came to check on her property after broken waterline was detected at the house. And when she arrived, took her complete shock. There turned out to be drug production hardware behind the house which was identified by law enforcement as a THC extraction system. I don't know what this is. These components included highly flammable hardware during a time where phase one and two fire bands existed in the community due to tender dry conditions. Essentially, there was evidence of methamphetamine production and high concentration levels of meth toxins in her beautiful log cabin alongside other illegal activities. Kathy McCarty, welcome.

Thank you, Mark. I appreciate being here.

So tell us, you know the story. So what happens?

It's a crazy, crazy story, isn't it? And it's one I feel passionate about. Turning my mess into a message to help others. And, and like you said, I had a major health event in early 2016. What seemed like a sensible solution to me turned into my worst nightmare when I put all the right protections in place. I followed what I thought were protocols and provisions that were important, from working with a management company to putting all the right insurance pieces in place. And ultimately it became the perfect storm.

Oh my gosh. So I'm a huge fan of the show Breaking Bad. Have you ever seen Breaking Bad?

I saw a couple episodes initially. I'm, I'm honest to say it did not grab my entertainment attention. And now I, I have a hard time. I would not, I would not Be able to watch it.

Yeah, it's. It's. Yeah, I would imagine. But everything I know about methamphetamine is literally from that show, and it does not paint a very good picture. Can you kind of tell us what happens when somebody produces or manufactures or cooks methamphetamine in a home? And how do we even know that they are.

Right. Right. Well, those were part of my 100 hu. Turtles. In the first hundred days that this all happened, I basically Learned that on 10-2-20, I learned that our family home, our sacred space, was turned into a meth lab. And I'm in Colorado, on the Front Range, outside of Denver, in a local community, bedroom community in the foothills, Evergreen, Colorado. And the Colorado laws may be different than other states, but a meth lab definition here in Colorado could be where meth is not only manufactured, but it's also consumed. So recreational consumption damage happens to a property when it's manufactured or when it's consumed by smoking it. Because the residue that one exhales when it's smoked permeates into the materials of whatever structure it's in, whether it's a home. And then there might be drywall, but in my case, it was mostly wood because I had a restored 56 restored log cabin that had some wood paneling inside and wood beams, as well as all the porous materials, carpet and paint, and your furnishings, your clothing, your artwork, your children's drawings. Whatever is open to the air is open to residue.

That's crazy. I mean, I've got a buddy in Chicago. He's. He's a landlord, and he was telling me about his past tenant was cooking a lot of curry, and they couldn't get the curry smell out of the. Of the. Of the apartment. And. And if you go online, curry is one of these things that it's very aromatic, and it just seeps into the. The wood and the carpet, and it's. It's just a difficult smell to get out. I can't imagine what methamphetamine would even smell like. And what are some of the. The telltale signs to even know that this is going on?

Right. And a lot of times there aren't actually. Once it was discovered that there was drug activity going on in my home, some of it was related to methamphetamine, and then other was related to THC products that were in high concentration there. There was hardware that was explosive that I witnessed on the outside of my home. And then there were pictures that were taken from the inside of my home. And that Explosive hardware could have damaged. It obviously put in danger not only anybody that was within my home, but actually my neighbors as well as our community. This was only three months after Paradise, California had a fire in the summer of 2018 and a significant amount of the community had burned out in California. It was explained to me that we were looking at possibly a similar situation. I'm not again here to instill fear. I'm just being very frank. It's a conversation I'm very passionate about because of the dangers. When you talk about your question about how can you tell when somebody's been doing it in your home, there may be some obvious signs. It may be in a neighborhood or community known for high crime, high drug traffic. But in our case, and what I've learned is there there are no geographical boundaries, inner city or city versus rural areas, suburbs or high end communities, and there are no socioeconomic boundaries either. It's been known that as I continue to bring this awareness, more and more people were testing for meth contamination when they look to purchase homes in more proper are testing positive, either due to hearing about my story and then taking that to heart and wanting to ensure the protections for their own family, or they heard it from maybe some professionals or some other avenue. So in my case, even the meth testing company that I used couldn't outwardly see any physical signs. There was no smell specific to methkin meth contamination that you could smell. Some experts talk about that there may have a scent of cat urine or high chemical smells, but in the case of my home, neither was recognized nor were there any sort of physical damages of the home from a rundown standpoint. But there were cameras set up in the home, on the outside of the home. And that is one telltale sign that law enforcement talks about is when you might have somebody who's occupying the home that has outside cameras to to know what's going on around the perimeters.

Okay, so telltale signs are going to be your, you could be in a bad area, high crime area, but that's not necessarily the case in all cases. But if there's cameras outside the home, and this is going to be more than just your ring camera.

Yeah, but there's technology has gotten so good that there may not be any telltale signs. What I have learned, and one of the things that I've been doing since this all came about is last year I aligned with experts in the industry of meth testing, contamination and other areas of expertise like property insurance and the impacts as well as even legal an attorney who focuses in on meth contamination and impacts. One of the things that the meth testing company talks about are just some of the tattoo signs where they keep ingredients around and the makings or the hardware associated with it. The ingredients like the Drano and lithium batteries. And there's a whole list of things that one can Google to understand what it takes to make meth and then consume it. The paraphernalia that you might find around a property, which might be little aluminum foilies that are burnt or pipes that are focused for the purpose of meth and they're making. You don't need a big, huge laboratory anymore. You can make it out of a 2 liter soda bottle. These days there's various ways that meth can be manufactured and consumed, that there are trails of telltale signs that are left by people that are in the home, whether they're guests in the home or their potential tenants or some other, some other way, like somebody that's been a hired worker that left left behind a telltale sign.

So usually, you know, in the building or the, the inspection process or the due diligence process. When you're going to buy a home, you, whether it's for investment or just for yourself, you'll get an inspection done. Will these inspectors even know what to look for? Or do you have to go out and find a different company that specializes in testing for methamphetamine if you suspect it?

Well, that's a, that's a great question mark. And I would say just like any, anybody else, even any other professional, any other trusted advisor that might be in the home purch process, they may or may not even know that meth contamination is even an issue. That's what I've been running into in professional spaces, whether they're realtors, lenders, trusted advisors, like you mentioned, even inspectors, many of them know about these types of things. But we're all coming to the table with our own personal profiling. Like that happens somewhere else. But not, not in my neighborhood or not in my community where we're pretty isolated from that type of activity. And that's why I am here to bring this conversation to a much larger audience. That this is a conversation that needs to be had is as tough as it is.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, creating awareness of this, I think is, is really valuable. And your story is very impactful. I mean, tell us a little bit more about what happened because you are not in your home.

No, I am not in my home. This particular process, for me and my journey, it is not easy to say this, but it hasn't left me homeless, but it has left me houseless and for many reasons. And this is another reason why I am so passionate about this conversation and bringing this awareness and ultimately education is because I rented out my home temporarily after having a health event. I thought it seemed like I said, a sensible solution to offset medical costs to unexpected health event and ultimately my next chapter. When I was unable to return to my career in banking, my sight was impacted, my eyes were impacted, and so I was working on healing and the next chapter. I'm the proud mom of three grown kids who were. My youngest was leaving for college off living their lives. And I chose to utilize my home, our home, as an asset to rent out temporarily. And I put all what I thought were the right provisions in place. You know, I had a homeowner's policy that had a, an endorsement or a rider that allowed me to have a tenant. I had thought that the management company had in their lease agreement had put in the provisions for the tenant that they were to have a tenants policy and all the other pieces that I thought were important. I'm a, I'm a lender of over 30 years. So going through a process with a management company on how they were going to vet the tenant and the questions that they ask and the validation and the verifications that they got, I was fully assured that this person was highly qualified business owner to be in my home. And those pieces of credit and cash flow and stability of income were all verified and insurance. And then what I learned also once, once I learned of the, the impact in my home and I went back to my own homeowners policy, is that when people commit crimes in your home, meaning they're allowed to be there and they commit a crime, our insurances are void. It's willful and wanton conduct. And I don't have a big insurance background, but I have spent the last two and a half years working with professionals in the insurance industry and whether they're major car or brokers. And nobody has been able to locate an insurance underwriter that would be willing to cover meth contamination in your home unless the home was broken into and somebody squatted in your property and set up a lab or consumed it and damaged it and then it would be covered under vandalism because they broke in. It wasn't. But when you invite people into your home, whether, you know, whether it's potentially a rental, a family member or a guest, or even a contracted worker and things like that are covered, it Potentially cannot be covered. And if it could be, there will be repercussions to try to navigate the insurance industry for, for payout. It's a brutal process.

I mean, that sounds brutal. Again, I'm so grateful I'm not in the house, I'm not a landlord or house flipper and just in raw land. But I can imagine there are people listening to this that do both. They do raw land investing, they get passive income from being a landlord multifamily. So how can we, now that we have this awareness, how do we protect ourselves?

Again, another great question, and I'm going to go back real briefly to my own situation is I thought I put the right protections in place through insurance and vetting a property management company. And so if you're going in that direction, one of the most significant pieces of advice I got after the fact was, is to have kind of a standardization. There are no standards within the property management industry is what I've learned. And I did try to, I did go down a legal path to hold the management company responsible for what I thought was their own neglect and misconduct because I learned that they didn't perform a vetting process that I was told that there was. I was never even given a credit report that was supposedly even viewed. So there's, there's a lot of gaps there. And ultimately what happened for me is that even though I pursued a legal process for 18 months to hold the management company for what I believed was their neglect and misconduct in this whole process, ultimately it was the tenant who cooked the meth. And I, I did not get anywhere close to what I thought was to make me whole when I ultimately had to sell my home. How do you protect yourself? Well, under residential real estate, which is anywhere from one to four units, so you could have up to a four plex. It's considered residential real estate in the insurance industry is to certainly have a conversation with your insurance company as to what kind of policies that you have or policy and endorsements and to understand what kind of contaminations are covered under your policy and how you can protect yourself if, if something were to happen and, and this could be meth, it could even be mold. So I've learned contaminants have a wide range of sources or radon or what, what, what other pieces or what other contaminates or substances there might be out there. Same thing with not only the insurance industry, but if you are using a management company or some sort of third party provider, what are their processes? Have a conversation of if you are renting out your home and using a management company that you're part of that decision making process. And there's a standard between the two of you that's in writing in a management agreement that you understand that you're part of that decision making process. Because ultimately I did not make that decision, but I asked what I thought were all the right questions and putting a lot of those protections in place. If you're renting out the property yourself, then it's a responsibility that falls on you. And certainly going through that due diligence process through who are the tenants Running a CBI type of report, CBI's Colorado Bureau of Investigation, you know, it's a $5 report that obtained on the Internet for purposes of knowing if there's any, any history or criminal activity in somebody's, in somebody's history at all. So you have an idea of what's gone with their history or their background is like not only them but anybody else that would live in the property. Those are, those are three, three of many, many areas that one would want to take also to make sure that there's activity that, that the property is visited often and there are provisions in place that allow for that. I was, I was told that the management company was going to do a walkthrough with the tenant a week after the, that they allowed them to settle in, tenants to settle in. And I was assured that that took place when I asked them how, you know, how check in went. And then I learned that that walkthrough never happened. So, you know, obviously it was the perfect storm for me and it was a unique situation where it was ultimately a management company that told me everything that I wanted to hear. And when I asked for written verification of it, I was dismissed in the sense that it was the privacy of the tenant that didn't allow me to see it. But I believe, you know, in hindsight is 20 20, that one could take that the next step and have that as part of, of the management process if they use a third party. We're also, you know, we're also renting out our homes on short term rentals now or, or maybe a room in our home, whether it's on a, one of those, one of those type of vacation by owner type of options and.

Right. Airbnb, vrbo.

Right. Right. And I have heard stories now from, as I continue to get involved in, in the space of other people's stories. That's really where taken me is to learn about other people's stories that nobody's talking about one young lady on the Front Range here who not only found meth paraphernalia one time when she rented out a room in her home to offset income. This is pre pandemic, but it has now since happened again where she found paraphernalia another time. And so we're inviting strangers to come into our. And where these types of things may not be covered. If there's a third party vendor that you're using for renting these types of things out, you, you have to get really educated as to what kind of coverage that you have with your own insurance company as well as what they're offering you in the way of protections because it's really hard to prove that, that the guest could have contaminated the home if you never had it tested prior to them being there and provided a benchmark that the home was not contaminated.

Right, right. And obviously, I mean, you know, there's always risk when you, when you rent a home, even if you do, you know, tremendous amounts of due diligence.

Correct.

You're always going to take a risk, but it is a calculated risk. I mean, do you know the percentage of people that, you know, either manufacture or, you know, smoke methamphetamine in this, in this country?

Well, I haven't not been able to find a website that'll actually confirm all of this for me. What I have found, at least through the experts that I'm talking to, is one to answer your question is I've learned that method when people go to rehab here along the Front Range here in Colorado, and please don't hold me to the exact quote, but that meth is the number two substance only behind alcohol. As to my understanding of why people are seeking substance rehabilitation, at least along the Front Range here, maybe even Colorado, number two, that's, that's number two substance. Even if it's number three or number four, I, you know, I mean, it's still a large amount. I've gotten statistics that well over from some of the meth testing companies that potentially well over 75% of all the properties that they're testing have some level of trace meth contamination. It could be very, very minute trace levels that are below the standard for our state, or it could be high concentrations or anything in between. And of Those anywhere from 20 to 30 need additional testing and maybe even a potential level of remediation that could be a fan in the bathroom to clean out the duct systems to something more significant, like with my home, where it would have been a full remediation and more so I'm hearing all sorts of statistics and I'm continuing now in my quest to go outside of the Colorado jurisdiction and get more and more factual data as I learn that there are no geographical boundaries. All major cities and all states are, they're all having some level of meth issues in their communities.

Wow. Well, well, Kathy, I, you know, I'm sorry this happened to you, but there's, you know, instead of being a victim, you're, you're taking your suffering and, and it's a purpose and you're, you're helping others. And I, I can't thank you enough. But in, in the impact that you're making because I, for one, it's just, was never even, even in my awareness. And I think the listeners are really going to benefit just having more awareness that this could be a thing, what to look for. And now there's a place that we could all go. If we do have a bad tenant or have a bad contractor, somebody that really abuses our trust in them, we have a solution in a place we can go with, with methtoxinsalliance.com so thank you so much. But we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to ask you for, and we me, I'm so used to Scott Todd being here. I'm going to ask you for another tip of the week. A website, another resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their business, improve their lives. But before you do that, I just want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week, which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Go up that mountain of land investing with Scott Todd. He's done it thousands of times. He'll take you up that mountain quickly, safely, efficiently. The tuition for flight school is not going to cost you anything. Guaranteed. You're going to make back that money 180 days or less. Just show us your work. Learn more. Go to landgeek.com training langeeck.com training all right, Kathy, what is your tip of the week?

Thank you, Mark, for asking. I believe education and resources are ultimately important as well as legislative changes and enhancements to protect people. And one of the best resources I have found to protect people from future impacts, especially those that are looking to purchase a home or are wondering if there was any previous impact in their own home. Because what I have found is remediation doesn't mean that a home is rid of meth contamination if it's been remediated. But at least in our state here, you're not required to disclose it if it's been remediated. So here in Colorado, if you go to the Colorado department, it's called the CDPHE website, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. And then you can go to a link that you can put in a physical address in and a home that was previously contaminated from meth and even other contaminants, asbestos, lead, but specifically meth. You can go and put in an address and find out if that particular property has been previously impacted and then remediated because that report will not go away. And I'm a believer that most of the other states have a similar type of website. It's just a matter of doing a little bit of extra digging to find out what website in your state offers a similar amount of information. So if you're in Colorado, that's the CDPHE website, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. And then there'll be links that can take you to where it is. Otherwise, contact me@methtoxinsalliance.com and I will be happy to reach out and find that link for you. For your own city, your own state. We do have a resource map on our website which is going through a major redo and will hopefully relaunch in the next couple of weeks. So it's still up right now and it has a link to a nationwide map where you can drill down to your own state and then your own county and your own health department there and learn about the health impacts and and more about what meth can do. So thank you. All right.

Well, thanks, Kathy. And you know, again, I would recommend Everybody go to methtoxinsalliance.com if you suspect your home or property has been contaminated with meth toxins because you're not going to not only test location, but also be current on the state's laws, regulations, resources. And Kathy has everything you need on the site. Methtoxinsalliance.com Kathy McCarty Are we good?

We are so good. I'm so delighted to share this information with your listeners. Thank you for having me. I look forward to hearing from people who want to learn more. The goal is protection through prevention, is to get ahead of it and not be impacted. And if you know of anybody that's looking to purchase a home in the near future is to really, really share this information with them. And I can assure you that having that property tested for meth prior to purchase as part of your due diligence will be money well spent.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well thanks again. I want to thank the listeners. Remind them the only way we're going to get the quality guests like a Kathy McCarty from methtoxinsalliance.com is if you do us three favors. You got to follow us. Rate, review the podcast. Send a screenshot of that review supportlandgeek.com we're going to send for free the $97 whole tailing course, how to Double youe Money 30 days or less. All right, thanks everybody. Let freedom ring. Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income Podcast. Start your journey at www.thelandgate.com and www.scotttodd.net. rate and review the podcast and email support thelandgeek.com your screenshot for a free Passive Income launch kit.