Aurora Borealis

It is not my strong suit.  But I’m going to need it.  It appears that the negotiation of the offer on our house may stretch into next week.  Ugh.

The good news is that the buyer is still interested.  The issue is that our house is on a septic system, not connected to the public sewer.  Apparently FHA requires for their financing that public sewer be connected if it is “available.” Well, there is a sewer tap on the street in front of the house.  But to connect to it, we’d have to come up through the basement (up a hill).  We were told in the past that it would be quite costly.  We didn’t even realize until about a year ago that we were on a septic system.  The tax record for the house says it’s on public sewer, and the septic system was not disclosed to me when I bought the house.  Then we had a seepage issue.  (No wonder, as it had been at least 9 years since it was pumped!)  So at the time we briefly investigated going ahead and connecting to the sewer system, and we heard from several folks that it would be a large and expensive undertaking.  We had the tank pumped and it was given a clean bill of health.  In fact we were told our drainage field appears to be in nearly pristine condition.

Now FHA may require the connection in order to make a loan to this buyer.  Apparently the buyer doesn’t mind at all the idea of being on septic.  (Hey, at least I was honest enough to disclose so he gets that choice and knows what he’s getting, unlike when I bought the house.) But “We’re the government, and we know what’s good for you.”  So our agent and his are working on getting contractors out to look and get a good price estimate on what it would really take.  Then the issue, I guess, is given whatever that number is, does FHA still deem a sewer tap to be available and require a connection, and if so, can we make the numbers work for us and for him to make this deal go?

In the meantime, we had another showing yesterday afternoon. Let’s hope we get a sale out of this somewhere!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.