Sewer Televising

[Jedd Braunwarth]

Just curious on how many of you do sewer line televising while in your 10 day inspection period when buying a new property? If you do not I just wanted to share my experience with you to encourage you to do so. 

To start, right out of college I actually worked two years for a municipality and did some sewer televising myself. Doing this taught me about all different types of pipe, ages, ways of failure, etc. Being from the midwest, with water and sewer laying below the frost line, sometimes 6-12 feet deep it can get very costly to replace by excavation. Another option is pipe lining, which doesn't involve excavation, and can be quite a bit cheaper but some municipalities do not allow it. 

Because of my past learning about televising I pay a sewer company to come televise all of my potential purchases. Cost is around $200 to have done but it is well worth it. How has it been well worth it? Well, my last two purchases it has saved me roughly $20k+! The first one we found it had collapsing Orangeburg pipe. I backed away from my offer and the seller came back and ended up replacing the sewer for me before closing as long as we stayed at the original sale price. In the end, I got a great cash flowing duplex with a brand new sewer at no extra cost to me (minus the $200 I spent to get it televised).

Second and latest story that is happening now! I am in contract on a SFH right now and got the sewer televised ($210), it is an old house with clay tile sewer pipe which generally has a lot of root issues (very common) but not a deal breaker to me. Well the camera couldn't get through all of the roots. Since the seller wouldn't budge on getting the roots removed for me, I payed up on my own to have the sewer line jetted to get rid of the roots ($425) and then have them re-camera (I had to know the condition of the pipe before moving forward). I Didn't want to spend this money on a house I didn't own, especially if I didn't buy because now I just cleaned the sewer for someone else! Glad I did, because the sewer has a large hole in it, right under the biggest tree on the property. It also has an illegal storm water downspout connection which will be required to get fixed. I am in negotiation now with that seller and may walk away from the deal losing my $635 I spent on sewer cleaning and televising but saving me $10k of replacing a sewer as a surprise. But they are considering fixing it themselves or even dropping the sale price to me by $15k. All a win for me and money well spent.

The reason these findings are significant is now if I walk away the seller now has to provide this information as known on the seller disclosure. Everyone after me will now be aware the sewer is bad and obviously demand a different sale price.