Structural Issues

[Christine Ong]

Help! My offer was accepted! Going in I knew this particular property had structural issues. And I had inspected the property with my contractor. He had quoted me with the more expensive method of repair and we took that into consideration when I made an offer. 

But now that I am on my due diligence period I want to make sure that the problem is what we accounted for and not worse. The structural engineer that made a visual inspection said that the property clearly demonstrates vertical settlement and recommends we do a manometer survey that costs $1,800.00 Do I just bite the bullet and pay for the survey? He is also recommending a leak detection test. My contractor recommends that instead of spending money on all the investigative work, we just kill the mains and lay a new line altogether. What should I do? How far should I go with the investigation? I don't want to spend $5K on investigating only to walk away from the deal in the end. But on the other hand I don't want to do a sloppy repair that may potential be a hazard.