Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

Rapid City Home Sewer Line Issues and the Home Sale

Sewer line issues and the home sale.

Hi everybody, this is Tristan Emond with Mindful Living Realty.

Welcome back to Tristan and his WHITEBOARD - LIVE!

Yes, I've got drawings on my board already and no - my kids did not draw them...I did.  Yes, I am an artist. I've even got the sun shining on the house!

Today, we're going to talk about sewer lines.  And this is a very important thing to talk about when it comes to the buying and selling transaction because...we will talk about now!

The sewer line, as we know, runs from the house all the way to the street.  As a homeowner in Rapid City, you are responsible for everything from here to where it connects into the city line.

Now, normally that's not a problem.  You've probably never even thought about it.  It's always worked, so not a not a big deal.

The issue comes into play where you have an older home - especially in the 40s to the 60s in the southeast part town.  Those homes were built with a pipe called Orangeburg. And that pipe was basically a hard cardboard.

What happens is over to the course of time, with all the moisture and the tree roots and everything, those pipes start to collapse. I've seen some that gone down to this. I've seen some of them nothing.

As a buyer, you're going to want to spend the money to get a scope of all the line to make sure that that is clear of any problems.  So you're not dealing with the sewer backup.  If we need to replace this line, it's a good $5,000 bill.  We want to make sure that that is covered for you as a buyer.

And as a seller you’ll want to consider the fact that hey – yeah, you have never replaced your sewer line, and you've never done anything with it...you may want to think about that's something that a buyer coming to buy your home might be concerned with.

Now obviously on the newer homes that have the PVC pipe lines already installed, not generally too worried about those. Those usually hold up pretty well.

But the older homes...as a buyer's agent I'm going to be running a sewer line scope just to make sure that those are in place and it's not going to be huge bill for the buyer.

I've had a few deals where those deals have broken apart because of that scenario.

Now there might be a couple - there's a couple of easy ways to kind of get a general idea of has it been replaced yet or not.  If you look on the street a lot of times, you'll see a cut out from the concrete.  Also, on the yard, you'll see a - somewhere in the front yard - you'll see a clean-out there.  If you see these two things, you probably have a good idea that it has been replaced at some point.

Not that I will still wouldn't want to run the sewer scope, but that might be a good indication that it's been replaced at some point.

So, there we go - the sewer line.

I got through it without even making any crappy puns!

Have a great day everybody!  We'll talk to you next time.

Tristan Emond
Mindful Living Realty
Rapid City SD 57702
605-391-7086