Home buying.. mold in crawlspace a concern? (sale, house)

[farscapesg01]

We are in the process of putting a backup offer on a house that already has an offer with a contingency of sale on it. The realtor just found out today that they are having mold remediation done on the crawlspace, which wasn't in the disclosure, after the current offer's inspection. He acted like this is common for the area. We are from Houston, so heat and humidity is second nature to us.. but crawlspaces aren't. We have a copy of the receipt for the remediation efforts being done.

Should this be a concern, or is it really pretty common for a home inspection to find it? Does it make sense to pay for a full mold inspection by another company along with our own property inspection, or is that even possible?

With the housing market up there, the buyer's requirement for accepting our proposal as a back up settled at $5k less than asking with the property being "as is" (house listed at $385k, offered $375k and they countered with $380k "as is"). That "as is" portion set off a few warning alarms in my head, but our realtor claims it is common in the market, especially when the offered price is lower than the asking one, as the buyers are just saying they don't want to spend any more money to sell it. Now with the mold remediation I'm wondering what else may be uncovered during the home inspection, if we get that far (original buyer has until tomorrow morning to remove their contingency).

[Creekcat]

I would wonder if it just stops in the crawlspace. Do a walk around the area and look for potential flash flooding problems, such as drainage ditches, that may overflow onto the property.

[DaveM123]

I would say that mold in the crawlspace is more common than you would think, The big problem is ventilation - some places just don't get enough airflow through the crawlspace. We bought a house that had this issue and had the crawlspace encapsulated and a has a dehumidifier in it. Doing that isn't cheap but it works.

[farscapesg01]

Thanks. We have an inspection this week and I flew up here to be present during it so I can ask questions and take a look myself.