What It Costs to Live Inside This Story

Picture the moment a family signs a contract on a home. Maybe it is their first. Maybe they saved for years. Maybe there are kids involved, or a baby on the way. They trust the real estate agent in front of them because that is what you do. The agent knows the law. The agent handles the paperwork. The agent has done this hundreds of times. That trust is the entire basis of the transaction.

Federal law exists precisely for this moment. The Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992 was written because decades of medical research had already made one fact impossible to ignore: lead paint in pre-1978 housing is one of the most common and preventable causes of childhood lead poisoning in the United States. The law does not ask a real estate agent to remove the paint, conduct an inspection, or pay for remediation. It asks for paperwork. It asks the agent to put in writing that the buyer was told the risks, handed a pamphlet explaining those risks, and given any records the seller has about lead conditions in the home. It asks the agent to put in writing that they knew about their own duty to protect the buyer.

Marchant Real Estate did not do that. Not once, but twice, across two different homes, over a span of more than two years. One home at 107 Elm Street was contracted for sale in December 2022. A second home at 8 Lindberg Avenue was contracted in January 2025. Two years passed between those transactions. The law did not change. The requirement did not go away. The obligation existed every time Marchant Real Estate’s name went on a contract for a home built before 1978.

The people who bought those homes cannot unlearn what they were never told. A pamphlet explains that lead paint dust from deteriorating surfaces or renovation work is the primary exposure route for children under six. It explains how to test, how to mitigate, and what symptoms of lead poisoning actually look like in a child, because many parents do not know. Lead poisoning does not announce itself. A child does not collapse. They slow down. They fall behind. Their IQ drops by points that are measurable in studies but invisible to a parent who does not know to look. The damage is permanent. No amount of money, no consent agreement, and no $1,300 penalty reverses a neurodevelopmental harm that was allowed to happen because a real estate agent skipped a form.

The buyers of these two homes may have been fully informed by other means. Marchant Real Estate’s records may show that verbal disclosures happened. The EPA consent agreement is careful to note that Marchant neither admits nor denies the factual allegations. But the law requires documentation for exactly this reason: verbal assurances cannot be verified. A signed form creates a moment of accountability that forces the conversation to actually happen. When the form is missing, there is no proof the conversation did. The bureaucratic failure and the human failure become the same failure.

The homes at 107 Elm Street and 8 Lindberg Avenue in Greenville are real places where real people live right now. Whether children live in them, or ever will, is not something this EPA consent agreement records. What the document does record is that the agency responsible for ensuring those buyers knew their rights chose, twice, not to comply with the mechanism that law created to protect those buyers.

Straight From the Federal Document: What the EPA Found and What Marchant Agreed To

These are direct quotes from Docket No. TSCA-04-2025-6109(b), the federal consent agreement and final order filed with the EPA Region 4 Hearing Clerk on September 22, 2025. Nothing below has been paraphrased or invented.

Who Gets Hurt When a Real Estate Agent Skips the Paperwork

Public Health

Lead paint disclosure laws exist because lead exposure in children causes documented, irreversible neurological damage. When a real estate agent fails to follow these laws, the consequences reach well beyond the transaction.

• Children under six are the highest-risk group for lead poisoning from deteriorating lead-based paint in pre-1978 housing. Both properties in this case, built in 1945 and 1950, fall squarely within that risk category. Whether children currently occupy these homes is not documented in the EPA filing.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. Even low-level exposure is associated with reduced IQ, attention deficits, learning disabilities, and increased risk of behavioral problems. These effects are permanent and cannot be reversed with medical treatment.
• The federal pamphlet that Marchant Real Estate failed to document providing to buyers contains specific guidance on identifying lead hazards, what to do before renovating, and how to test for lead. Buyers who never received or do not recall receiving this information are less equipped to protect their families from renovation-triggered lead dust, which is the most common exposure event in older housing stock.
• The buyer’s signed receipt is not just administrative paperwork. It creates the moment when a real estate professional is legally required to pause the transaction and confirm the buyer has the information needed to make an informed decision about moving into a home built before lead-based paint was banned. Removing that pause from two transactions is a public health failure, not a clerical one.
• Low-income buyers and first-time homeowners are disproportionately represented in the market for older, pre-1978 homes in cities like Greenville, SC. These are also the buyers least likely to independently know their federal rights or to independently seek out lead hazard information. The disclosure laws were designed specifically for this population.

Economic Inequality

The financial structure of this enforcement action reveals a gap between the cost to the company and the cost to the public that defines how corporate accountability works in the United States right now.

• The $1,300 penalty covers two separate federal violations across two home sales. Greenville, SC real estate commissions on homes in the $150,000 to $250,000 price range generate agent fees in the thousands of dollars per transaction. The penalty is a fraction of the revenue generated by the transactions it was supposed to protect.
• If a buyer in one of these homes later discovers lead-based paint hazards and needs remediation, the cost of professional lead paint abatement for a single home typically runs between $8,000 and $15,000 according to industry estimates. Marchant Real Estate’s total federal liability for both homes combined is $1,300.
• If a child in one of these homes develops lead poisoning requiring medical intervention, educational support, or long-term care, those costs are borne by the family, by health insurance, and by public programs. None of that cost was transferred to Marchant Real Estate through this enforcement action.
• The consent agreement’s Paragraph 35 states that the penalty is not tax-deductible, which is presented as a punitive measure. But a $1,300 non-deductible penalty on a professional real estate business is still a rounding error in annual operating costs. The deterrence effect is minimal.
• Buyers in this situation have no guaranteed personal remedy from this federal enforcement action. The CAFO resolves civil penalty liability for the EPA. It does not create a private right of action, does not mandate remediation of the properties, and does not require any notification to the buyers involved in the two transactions.

What the Penalty Actually Buys

What You Can Do With This Information

Marchant Real Estate is now on record as a company that violated federal lead-paint disclosure law on two transactions. That record follows them into every future EPA enforcement action. Here is how to use that, and what else you can do.

The People on This Document

• Brian Marchant, Vice President, Marchant Real Estate, Inc. (brian@marchantre.com / (864) 631-5858): Named as the company’s contact recipient for the consent agreement. As Vice President, he is listed as the authorized representative who received the enforcement action and is bound by the CAFO’s compliance terms.
• Keriema S. Newman, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 4: Signed the consent agreement on behalf of the EPA on September 18, 2025. Her division is responsible for ongoing monitoring of Marchant Real Estate’s compliance.
• Mathew Rouse, Case Development Officer, TSCA Enforcement Section, EPA Region 4 (rouse.mathew@epa.gov): The EPA official assigned to this case. If Marchant Real Estate violates lead disclosure rules again, Rouse’s section is the one that would build a second enforcement action.

Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. EPA Region 4 (Southeast): The agency that brought this enforcement action. If you are a buyer of any Marchant Real Estate-represented property built before 1978 and did not receive proper lead disclosures, you can file a complaint directly with EPA Region 4 at (404) 562-9900.
• EPA National Lead-Based Paint Complaint Line: 1-800-424-LEAD (5323). This line handles complaints about lead disclosure violations in housing sales and rentals nationwide.
• South Carolina Real Estate Commission: Marchant Real Estate is licensed and operates under state real estate law. Federal EPA violations can also be reported to the state licensing body, which has independent authority to investigate and discipline agents.
• South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC): The state-level agency with authority over environmental health hazards including lead exposure in residential settings. DHEC can order lead inspections and issue remediation orders independent of the federal EPA action.
• HUD Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes: Federal housing agency with overlapping jurisdiction on lead hazards in residential sales. Can receive complaints and coordinate with EPA on recurring violators.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Action

• If you bought a pre-1978 home through any South Carolina real estate agency and never received a lead hazard pamphlet or signed an acknowledgment form, request your complete transaction records immediately. You have the right to those documents. The absence of a required attachment is itself documentation of a potential TSCA violation you can report to EPA Region 4.
• Connect with local tenant and homeowner rights organizations in Greenville, SC. Groups like South Carolina Legal Services and Upstate Forever operate in the area and can advise on housing rights and environmental health protections without cost to low-income residents.
• If you have children and live in a pre-1978 home, request a blood lead level test from your child’s pediatrician. The CDC recommends testing for all children under six in high-risk housing. This test is typically covered by Medicaid and most private insurance.
• Share this enforcement record publicly when reviewing or referring real estate agents. EPA consent agreements are public documents. The existence of Docket No. TSCA-04-2025-6109(b) is a fact that prospective home buyers in the Greenville market have the right to know before selecting an agent.
• Pressure your local and state elected officials to increase funding for EPA lead disclosure enforcement. The TSCA enforcement budget for residential lead disclosure is chronically underfunded relative to the scale of pre-1978 housing stock in the Southeast. More inspectors means more catches like this one.