Huge plumbing issue, need help/advice

[Sev Pehlivanian]

Situation: I bought a single family home (built in 1952) back in November 2025 that was a complete remodel. Remodel done before I bought it and no one lived in it after the remodel. When the new tenants moved in January 16th, they informed me that the kitchen sink, bathroom sinks and shower drains were all backing up. Called a plumber the new day. They couldn't unclog it from inside the house and needed to install a cleanout (house did not one) to be able to scope the line. When they scoped the line they found:

-2 separate areas of root intrusion about 6 feet from the house

-broken pipe by the city tap

-deterioration of the cast iron piping

They recommended to replace the entire line from house to city sewer (about 55') to fix these problems. 

Upon completion, tenants claimed that the drains were still taking a while to drain. Plumber came out to snake the line going into the house from the exterior cleanout. After taking out some debride, he recommended to scope the line again to see how bad the backup is and if there are any other issues. That's going to happen tomorrow. 

So my question is...shouldn't the seller have done a check on the main sewer lines after the remodel? Do I have any leg to stand on if I choose to reach out to a lawyer to go after the seller for not looking into this or disclosing it? Obviously these issues didn't spring up overnight. Has anyone had a similar issue like this?

This has been a really tough couple days and I already feel like crap about this, so not looking for a woulda, coulda, shoulda. I'm a fairly new investor and this became a very expensive lesson to learn.  My process will obviously be changed for home buying will include scoping the main sewer line during the due diligence period from now on.  

Thanks

[Bruce Woodruff]

Quote from @Dan H.:

Quote from @Bruce Woodruff:

This is why I recommend that every buyer have the sewer line camera-ed on every purchase. Even newer houses, because a) ya never know what's going on underground, and b) the fix is a tad pricey :-)

Cheap and easy way to CYA....

 I would only inspect abs if there was something of concern.  In my market I have yet to even hear of an abs sewer failure. Cast iron and clay need inspections.    

This cast iron pipe is missing much of its top but leaked very little/no sewage.  It was a acting like a canal and the canal was sufficient to handle anything draining from that far up the sewer line.   Crazy!  A good/great home inspector who enters crawl space could catch this failure.  In this case the failure happened after my acquisition.  I re-plumbed all sewage lines and improved the clean outs.      

Good luck

While it is correct that ABS pipe rarely fails, it does quite frequently have bellies that can cause problems down the road. I would want to know about this. Also unless you scope it, you won't know how far the ABS runs on an older house where it has allegedly been replaced. Did they run it all the way to the city main in the street? Or did they get a little lazy and stop 20 ft short, and just tie into the old clay or cast iron?

 Camera inspections are inexpensive, no reason to not do one IMHO.....