How awful. What is the pollution that is harmful? Does it persist? What about houses next door? Ground water?

OP, I hope you find some answers.

I think it would very much matter what state you are in.

What matters to you, is your local disclosure form. Reading it carefully will tell you what you must disclose.

Are FSBO bound by the same disclosure requirements that RE agents are? Do banks consider this when making a loan? I mean, do they conduct their own search?

Here you are required to provide the same disclosures regardless of how you sell.

I've never hard of a disclosure law mattering if there is an agent or not. It is the SELLER not the agent that has to disclose things.

"Are FSBO bound by the same disclosure requirements that RE agents are?"

In most states, yes they are.

Arizona had a standard disclosure form for us to download and fill out.

I read over the Arizona SPDS and didn't see anything about disclosing if the home was a "meth house".

"A notice has also been added to the SPDS form to advise the buyer that sellers and brokers are not obligated to disclose certain information, such as the fact that the property has been the site of a death or felony, owned or occupied by a person with HIV/AIDS or located in the vicinity of a sex offender. "

While the Arizona SPDS does not appear to contain anything specific about a property having been used as a meth house, it also states:

Sellers are obligated by law to disclose all known material (important) facts about the Property to the Buyer. The SPDS is designed to assist
you in making these disclosures. If you know something important about the Property that is not addressed on the SPDS, add that
information to the form.

Most people would consider that a house used as a meth lab is an important fact, and failure to disclose this knowledge would almost certainly expose you to legal liability if you were later sued by the buyer.

There are no standards -- state or federal -- that I know of for what constitutes an adequate cleanup of a meth house, and the chemicals can persist (for example, in the sheetrock) and be emitted into the air long afterwards. There are some recommended cleanup procedures, but following them does not guarantee that the house won't continue to present a health risk.

Here is what can happen when you occupy a former meth house:

Former meth house compromises family's health

P.S.: In response to the OP's original question, here is an interesting article about the differences in specific disclosure requirements from state-to-state:

Meth house disclosure survey

Pity the property owner that rents a home to a meth cooker. They may never be able to rent or sell that property again.

SaltiDawg-

The problem is that no one can guarantee that all contamination has been cleaned up. I am aware of a meth house cleanup in my area where all the sheetrock -- walls and ceilings -- and all the wall to wall carpeting was removed and replaced..and there were still problems.

There's one I pass on the way to a friend's home, whole house had to be torn down. Yeah, and it was a rental in a very nice neighborhood, too.

In MN - very strict meth house disclosure rules.

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/meth/lab/inforealtors.html

Yes, and sometimes removing residual contamination means removing the house. I was implying what sushipup gave an example of. Meth house remediation is not simple, and gutting of the interior -- which one might think of as a complete cleanup -- can often be insufficient. On the bright side (!), demolition may resolve the disclosure dilemma...although, if there was evidence of chemical spillage on the grounds, then it might get more complicated.

And all I repeated said was, "any residual contamination that is unabated would be another thing."

We get it. If it is not "cleaned up", it must be disclosed. And in some "very strict" state or maybe states it must be disclosed. You think that if a house had to be demolished because of a meth lab that it would no longer need to be disclosed?

I've lost interest and deleted my obviously non-helpful perspective.

saltiDawg-

Sorry you lost interest...I wasn't trying to discourage you, but I did want to make a distinction I thought was important based on my own experience. Your last question is a good one and I can't give you a complete answer to it, because, for one thing, it could vary depending on local or State laws. I can tell you that when you have a meth house, meth cooks not only damage the house because of chemical spills and volatile organics that contaminate or leach into the internal structural materials, but they sometimes dump waste chemicals in the basements or backyards. As a result, remediation can sometimes involve more than even structural removal. I have some familiarity with this area due to a career spent partly in cleanups of contaminated industrial sites, and my coworkers who had to deal with meth houses sometimes found them to be the functional equivalent of a hazardous waste site.

Sounds like the best path to take is to disclose it and have a statement from a reputable firm saying that the home has been cleaned according to protocol and the threat ameliorated. I'm guessing it will still carry a cloud and a significant discount from the asking price. I don't guess an appraisal will venture an amount to reduce that home's value. Like I posted earlier "pity the property owner".