Concerning the sewer line going through Gillium's yard. "Forget" it is there. Never speak of it again.... We had a big ol' one going under the corner of our Inn #1 in Downtown Atlanta.... and we feel we would NEVER have been able to sell that house--not ever--IF anyone actually knew exactly where the line was. People are so nervous these days. Never give them something else to worry about (probably won't collapse and if it does, well, innkeepers "deal with things").
In an ideal world, the neighbor whose sewer line crosses your property should have an easement recorded at the registry of deeds, meaning that there should already be a record on file (which would likely be discovered when a prospective buyer's agent, or their mortgage company, does a title search). The existence of the sewer line (easement) would also likely be covered by disclosure laws, meaning that since you know about it, you are required to let prospective buyers know about it.
I agree that it is just one more thing for somebody to worry about, and while one can certainly choose not advertise these things widely, one cannot hide them.
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In OUR (Inn #1) case, the CITY owned the line--it was a main feeder for a block of houses nearby: made of brick about 3-4 feet tall, a few feet wide and freely flowing. One could see it free flowing down a grate in the back yard (of our residence but NOT our inn!) . And we knew to unstop it when it rained (an unfortunate combo of sewer and rain water run off piping; Atlanta had 23 miles of it with no funding to fix it. We never thought about WHERE it went until what I describe below was a topic of neighborhood news:
Truth be told, city had NO IDEA where their lines were! Maps were in accurate or non-existent. As a brick structure they were hard to trace after the fact... Developers in the late 1800s through about 1935 just put things in when/where they needed them, making all the pipes run downhill toward the river. This came to light when one collapsed somewhere between a small shopping area and a park, resulting in the corner of a grocery store falling in about 1.5 miles away ....
Then we began to wonder...
We always thought the pipe either ran under the house OR just next to the foundation but outside the inn-house footprint.... the direction of the main sewer in the street was generally that way. One could only guess. Since nobody asked our Realtor or us about it we figured they had all the info they needed from us. Any written info is available at City Hall. In fact, aside from demanding some electric box work, they never asked anything of us.
As they say: answer the questions and don't offer anything not asked.
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