The frenzied housing boom Portland witnessed this decade produced many things- bidding wars, record low inventory, a seller’s market, high real estate prices… short sales, record high inventory, a buyer’s market and lower real estate prices. The early ups and today’s down.
Beneath these markets, record real estate sales, and specifically thousands of houses- an inspection service grew at a pace even more hurried. Stats, I don’t have them. I can only tell you from professional experience- the sewer scope inspection, these years, transformed from rare to medium to normally done.
Buyers I guide understand why performing sewer scopes are important. Sellers now come to expect them done hand-in-hand with home inspections. And while I don’t have the numbers to back me up, I do have the phone numbers for companies that perform sewer scope services. I can tell you that they’re as busy as anyone in the real estate industry. In fact, the company I refer most often is always booked way in advance of anyone else. The owner told me he turned down 30 appointments last week and 25 the week before.
Below is a video of a sewer scope performed on an old house in the Laurelhurst neighborhood in Southeast Portland. The scope came back fine, but the inspector was looking for root intrusions, gaps, large bellies in the line, etc.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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2 comments:
Actually, there are bidding wars going on in some neighborhoods but only on the low-end pricing. This battleground is staged by the first time home buyers taking advantage of various incentive programs and real estate investors competing for rock bottom pricing. This is leading to overbidding and multiple offers, but ONLY IN THAT PRICE MARKET.
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I agree with you on the inspection issue. I recently had an inspection done on a property I bought a few years ago that had chronic plumbing problems. It turned out that the connection to the main line at the curb had shifted several inches and material was getting blocked and backing up the two residential units and the commercial space resulting in some expensive clean up bills and a costly ($4,000) bill to dig up the sidewalk and repair the connection. (In the process we found that the utility company was responsible for running lines over ours and forcing the line out of alignment...good luck on pursing getting the expense recovered, though!)
We might have been able to negotiate the repair bill in the sale agreement had we had an actual video inspection done before the purchase.
I recommend the procedure highly!
I definitely recommend a sewer scope. Ours uncovered a "party sewer" which is an automatic failure & the city requires repair. Especially prominent in SE and with older homes. We were able to negotiate the $7k repair in our offer.
Phew! Well worth the $85 bucks!
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