Mr or Mrs. Seller you say you have a septic system? Please cross your fingers when your buyer has it inspected. Why?

As soon as I hear my buyers are buying a home with a septic system or my sellers have an original septic system I think "Here we go".  Why?  Septic systems don't last forever.  Many homeowner have their septic pumped every other year and think everything is working fine until they go to sell their home.  The buyer pays for an independent inspection and finds out that system is not functioning properly.  What goes wrong?  The septic tank can be cracked, the distribution box crushed or the leaching fields may not be functioning properly.  These can all be fixed for a price of up to $10,000 or more for a new system.  Who bears the price?  The seller.  Who would buy a house without a functioning waste disposal system?  No one.  Why would someone buy a house with a septic system?  Public sewers are not available everywhere.  Where I live in CT, there are many areas that do not have public sewers available and a septic system is the only option.  I recently had a client selling a home which had a septic system.  Everything seemed to be going great after receiving multiple offers on the home in the first week.  The septic inspection revealed there was not an actual septic system hooked up.  There was a "jimmied" system dumping into the back yard.  The house had originally been a small home which was later re-built into a 3,000 square foot home.  The septic was not updated and had somehow passed inspection when my client bought the home seven years before. Due to the extremely rocky soil in the area, the new septic system would cost somewhere around $30,000. There was no public sewer available on the street.  For information on homes in CT, please visit www.SarahAshtonCT.com.