Disclosure to Buyers - Read the Small Print
Miami-based Lennar Homes is caught in the down wind from Suncoast Meadows, a master planned community they built in Land O’Lakes Florida. A small part of the property was originally a waste landfill site. Lennar Homes states they cleaned the portion of the Suncoast Meadows land tract removing toxic debris when they discovered the waste landfill during development. Unfortunately, the stench didn’t go away. Property owners claim high levels of ammonia and methane gases still permeate the surface reeking foul smells and property owner’s have engaged the Department of Environmental Protection’s assistance.
According to the Tampa Tribune, Lennar Homes had disclosed the waste landfill in literature provided to buyers at closing. A little late in the process, don’t you think? Lennar Homes took precautions by building community amenities, a swimming pool and cabana in the location where the waste landfill was discovered, instead of new homes. A good solution? In hindsight, protected green space or a conservation easement might have been a better choice. While we're quick to point the finger at Lennar Homes, our question goes back further in time, wondering how Lennar Homes missed this disclosure to them when Lennar Homes purchased the tract of land now known as Suncoast Meadows.
When we score master planned communities in the Southeast, we search for waste landfill sites nearby using maps available on the internet. If Google Maps or Map Quest does not reveal waste landfill locations, without us hiring a staff of engineers and scientists to study the master planned community’s history, we could easily get caught in the same trap. We feel bringing up the issue on our scorecard is worth the risk because it creates an awareness with buyers and our hope is to teach buyer's to dig deeper through their own due diligence. There is no simple solution here for Lennar Homes or Suncoast Meadows property owners. Suncoast Meadows property owner’s must disclose this waste landfill issue to prospective buyers.
Buyers who want to sell their homes in Suncoast Meadows will find it extremely difficult to sell their homes as did property owner’s in the Acreage located in Royal Palm Beach Florida. The Acreage is also known as the Loxahatchee Acreage, the site of the Acreage Cancer Clusters. The Acreage Cancer Clusters were discovered in the summer of 2009 when a number of families discovered brain tumors in their small children in the neighborhood. A class action lawsuit was filed on February 10, 2010 against United Technologies Corporation d/b/a Pratt & Whitney for secretly dumping toxic materials into the ground since the 1950’s, materials which included "acidic and alkaline rinse waste water" as well as oil, sodium cyanide, construction debris, solvents, asbestos, fuels, paints, pesticides, mercury and laboratory chemicals.
The moral of the story here is to do your homework as best you can and read all the documentation provided to you, especially the small print. Our heart goes out to the property owners at Suncoast Meadows and Acreage Cancer Clusters stuck in a quandary. We're confident the quality Miami-base home builder Lennar Homes will make things right at Suncoast Meadows, as best they can.
Readers will find our story Talking Trash in Florida another trashy read about waste landfills and their impact to property values.
