Why buyers and lenders both balk
Two things have to survive for a listed sale to close: the buyer's nerve and the buyer's lender. A failed cesspool takes out both at once.
The buyer is picturing the yard dug up and a bill nobody will commit to in advance. The lender is looking at a property that cannot practically be occupied until the waste system works. Either one alone is enough to end a contract, and the house goes back on the Levittown market with more days on it and a cesspool in its history.
How we help Levittown owners with a failed cesspool
We buy houses with failed cesspools regularly, which means we already know who does this work properly and roughly what it runs. That is the practical difference between us and a buyer meeting the problem for the first time.
We have sanitary contractors and engineers we have used for years, and we bring them in on our own account after closing rather than asking you to arrange anything. And if it turns out that replacing the cesspool and listing the house on the open market would leave you better off, we will tell you so and give you the name of the contractor we would call.
Why local knowledge changes the number
A house on Bark Lane. A house on Dogwood Lane. Both in Levittown, bought and paid for by us.
Levittown is roughly 51,758 people in Nassau County, ZIP 11756, and the housing stock is mostly levitt cape, levitt ranch, cape cod. Around Hempstead Turnpike and Wantagh Avenue, most of it is old enough that the mechanicals are on their second or third life. We have been buying across Nassau County for 15+ years. We know what the Levittown Union Free School District does to a resale price, which blocks still have oil tanks in the ground, and what a house like yours is actually worth here.
Replacing the cesspool first is usually the expensive order
Do not spend money on an inspection or a pump-out for our sake. We are asking for neither.
If the cesspool has already been looked at, bring whatever the contractor wrote down and it saves a conversation. If it has not, we would rather walk the property ourselves and price the system from what we can see. We are buying the cesspool along with the house, so there is nothing you need to prove to us about it beforehand.
What replacing a waste system actually involves
Replacing a waste system is a project rather than a repair. It means design, approvals, excavation, and a yard that looks like a construction site for a while, and on some lots the layout makes it considerably harder than on others.
What is permitted and what it costs turns on the specifics of your parcel, and the two places to get a real answer are your county health department and a sanitary contractor who has walked the property and looked at the cesspool. What we can tell you is that we buy houses with failed cesspools without needing any of that settled first.
How we arrive at a number on a house with a failed cesspool
On a house with a failed cesspool we start from the end: what it sells for once the work is done. From that we take away the cost of the work and a margin for the chance that we have misjudged either one. That is the whole method. Nothing is hidden in it.
- What it is worth repaired. Not the Levittown median of $728,000 on its own, but what houses like yours on your street actually closed at recently.
- What the work costs. Roof, boiler, electric, the kitchen and bath. In Levittown the stock is largely levitt cape and levitt ranch, and on houses that age the mechanicals are usually the expensive part rather than the cosmetics.
- How long we will hold it. The median Levittown house goes under contract in about 44 days once it is showable, then waits 45 to 60 days more on the buyer's lender. Ours has to get to showable first, and we carry taxes and insurance across the whole of it.
- What we are wrong about. Walls and floors hide things until they come up. We price for that uncertainty, and it accounts for much of the distance between a cash offer and a retail price.
How we can pay this and still make it work
Most cash buyers skip this part. We do not. We run millions of dollars of construction a year, so we buy materials at contractor prices and keep our crews busy all year. The same renovation costs us roughly half of what you would be quoted as a homeowner.
That difference is how we make money. It is also why renovating before you sell seldom comes out ahead: you would pay retail for the roof and the boiler and then hope a buyer pays you back for them. Most of the time they do not. Our margin comes from building for less, not from buying from you for less.
If our number does not work for you, tell us. We would much rather hear it than push. We will go through your situation and give you a straight view of your options, including the ones that leave us out. A lot of people do better listing with an agent, and if you are one of them we will tell you now rather than have you find out later.
No lender, no repair conditions, no sign-off to wait on
A failed cesspool is a privacy problem too, which people rarely mention out loud. A listing means a sign on the lawn in Levittown, strangers walking through on weekends, and a yard that is visibly torn up or visibly unusable.
There is none of that with us. One visit, a written number, a closing date you choose, and no explaining the cesspool to anybody on the street.
What you do not pay when you sell a house with a failed cesspool
Every line below is a cost of listing a house with a failed cesspool the retail way that simply does not arise here.
- Agent commission
- $36,400 at 5% of the Levittown median none
- Seller closing costs
- About $14,560 on a $728,000 sale. We can cover these. none
- Repairs to make it listable
- Whatever it takes to make it listable, paid in advance none
- Cleanout and removal
- Paid per load, before a single buyer walks through none
- Carrying costs while it waits
- Taxes, insurance and utilities while you spend 89 to 104 days finding a buyer and waiting for their loan none
What to do next about the cesspool at your Levittown house
New York has disclosure obligations for sellers, and what applies to your situation is a legal question. Ask an attorney about the cesspool before you sell to anyone, ourselves included.
Separately from that: tell us everything. When the cesspool failed, what it did, who has looked at it, what they said. None of it puts us off, and all of it makes the number solid the first time. The deals that fall apart are the ones built on half the story.
Common questions
Do I have to fix the cesspool before you buy a Levittown house?
Not at all. No repair, no replacement, no pump-out, no inspection. The condition of the cesspool is priced into the offer, and the offer does not move afterward.
What does a new cesspool or septic system cost?
It turns on the lot, the location and what the county health department requires at your address, so any cesspool figure quoted from a web page is a guess. A sanitary contractor who has walked the property will give you a real answer.
The cesspool backed up but the house is still livable. Is that a failure?
Not necessarily. A single backup can be a simple blockage. Repeated backups, standing water in the yard, or a smell that keeps returning point toward the cesspool itself. We will give you our honest read on the system when we look at the Levittown property.
A buyer walked away over the cesspool. Does that hurt my chances with you?
Not at all, and it is how a great many people arrive here. A retail buyer walking over a failed cesspool tells us something about that buyer, not about your house.
Do you buy houses on septic as well as cesspools?
Yes. A great deal of Nassau County is on cesspools or septic rather than sewers, and we buy across all of it. Whatever is in your yard, it does not have to be working for us to buy the house.