40 ft of Tunneling = $14,000 plumbing repair: worth it?

[S Buhidma Caudill]

I own a duplex in Austin, very close to the Domain (an ever expanding area, even during the pandemic). I got it at a great price about 5 years ago, due to its foundation issues.

During the sale, our real estate agent successfully negotiated for the seller to pay the cost of the foundation repair, and then we eventually split the cost of resulting plumbing repair with the seller (a very expensive endeavor).

My husband and I are househacking. The initial plumbing repair took up enough of our startup money that we were only able to repair the side we wanted to rent out, and basically have done nothing to our side (our side is NOT rent ready...it still has lots of wall and floor damage from the initial foundation repair).

Fast forward to today - I’ve discovered they only repaired HALF of the foundation. Our previous tenant moved out in February. We discovered a lot of damage from foundation movement on that side. So much, that we decided to go ahead and fix the foundation on that side.

As luck would have it, the company we used repaired the foundation - they dug through several places in the floor to do it, then back filled the dirt, THEN they did the hydrostatic test, only to discover it failed. (Note to self - next time go with a company that does a preliminary test before doing the work, and then does not back-fill the dirt until they’ve done the final test!)

Anyway, I found another, much better company who was able to locate a pretty big sewer leak under the house. The repair requires them to tunnel 40 feet and replace the pipes all the way out to the city sewer line. It’s a $14000 price tag. Understandably so.

My husband and I are reeling from the sticker shock. We’d love to get y’alls take on this - is this just part of the investment game, and totally worth it, given the location of our property? Or does this sound like way too much money, better to just “sit on it” on it for a while, or get out from under it completely?

Ultimately we just want to know how you guys would think through this problem.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you can share!