TAMPA - Showing up on real estate agents' listings these days: homes with caustic, smelly drywall from China.

Also showing up: willing buyers.

Andres Hernandez and his wife fell in love with a new house in South Tampa contaminated with Chinese-made drywall. It made the house uninhabitable.

A rotten-egg stench filled the air, and the drywall emitted a sulfuric gas that corroded the air-conditioning coils, light fixtures and appliances. Buyer after buyer said no, but the Hernandezes wanted it.

The couple thought the $290,000 they paid was a good price for the 4,000-square-foot home. They paid contractors about $40,000 to replace the drywall and think it's now worth nearly $400,000.

"Everyone is so scared of this drywall," said Andres Hernandez, who now lives in the home with his wife and two small children. "But once you remove it, it's good, it's gone. It's not a bacterial infection that spreads."

Throughout the Tampa Bay area, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of homes like the one the Hernandez family bought. Increasingly, they're listed for sale. Some have been gutted and reconstructed by builders. Others are listed "as is."

The homes for sale typically have unbelievably low listing prices, some at a fraction of the cost of comparable homes in the neighborhood. They range from town homes in the suburbs to million-dollar waterfront properties.

The federal government is investigating possible health problems associated with the drywall. Homeowners have complained of breathing trouble, headaches and nose bleeds. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recently recommended that homes with the drywall be gutted and rebuilt.

Renters beware

Real estate agents say those who have cash to fix homes can get a bargain, but they should understand the risk: Buyers may underestimate the scope of the problem. Renters, also, face problems with unscrupulous investors who take on tenants without fixing the drywall.

Robert Fernandez, a real estate agent with Citimax Homes and Loans, is trying to sell a tainted-drywall home for a client in South Tampa. After five days on the market, he received 40 phone calls and 25 e-mail messages for interested buyers, he said. No serious offers, though.

The five-bedroom, 2,708-square-foot home in the Ballast Point neighborhood is listed for $174,900. He has estimates that show it would take $190,000 to fix the drywall problems. If the home didn't have the bad drywall, Fernandez estimates it would sell for about $350,000. At the height of the market in 2006, he said, it would have been worth about $750,000.

"I get calls from people who can't believe they can afford this kind of house and wonder if they can just live with the drywall," Fernandez said. "I tell them this isn't the house for them."

The most disturbing calls, he said, are from investors who have no intention of replacing the drywall. And if they do, he said, some want to do it as cheaply as possible.

Making repairs

Experts disagree about how to remedy the problem. Some say the home must be gutted to the studs and every inch of drywall replaced. They say wiring, the air conditioner, appliances, cabinets and even flooring must be removed. Others say only the drywall needs to be replaced.

"If you're an investor, you're trying to maximize your profits. How do you fix the problem?" Fernandez said. "Do you change all the drywall or just the drywall in certain rooms? The chances of an investor getting it all out, in most cases, is slim to none."

That's a scary thought, said Danna Fischer, legislative director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The housing crisis, she said, affects renters, too. They can get kicked out when their landlord ends up in foreclosure, and by the time a renter realizes the home has tainted drywall, she said, the investor may have collected months of rent and deposits.

"I absolutely see the potential for these homes to be snapped up by investors and turned into rental properties," she said. "And they'll probably be rented to low-income tenants."

Fischer said she is not aware of any laws that would require landlords to notify tenants of the drywall. There have been no definitive answers on health effects from government agencies studying the drywall.

Tom Scaglione, a real estate agent with Future Home Realty Inc., said most brokers require sellers to disclose that the home has tainted drywall. Even so, he said, renters wouldn't see that disclosure form.

Some agents divulge the drywall issue in the listing. A search of a database of Bay area homes for sale showed 23 listings mentioning the tainted drywall. Scaglione said that sounds low.

"There's probably another million homes that will come on the market nationwide over the next year," he said. "Many will have this drywall."

There is no law in Florida that specifically addresses the drywall from China, but there is a statute that requires real estate professionals to "disclose all known facts that materially affect the value of the property."

Linda Reynolds, an agent with Reynolds Realty of Manatee, is experiencing another facet of the problem. Her Sun City Center client tried to sell his home at a low price. He's now paying to replace the drywall, but the home still receives little attention from buyers.

"We listed the house 'as is' and put a low price on it, and no one wanted it," Reynolds said. "We got inquires, but they wanted the drywall fixed. Now the seller is fixing it, but we've had to raise the price. There has been no response."

Some buyers, she said, are just as afraid of the stigma of living in a home that had tainted drywall as they are the drywall itself.

Hernandez, the buyer who repaired his family's South Tampa home, said he is aware of the stigma but thinks people are uneducated.

"I would never live in a home with the drywall," he said. "That's just not smart. But this problem is totally fixable."