One House Out, New House In

Jodie and I are now under agreement on a different house. The inspection on the first house went fairly well. The boiler is older and needs a new coil, and some of the electrical wiring was out of date, but the big issue was the septic system. The septic system is undersized and not state approved. There is a 500 gallon metal tank and a trench line rather than a leach field. Kent Septic did the inspection and said they don't even like to pump metal tanks because they collapse. The inspection results were somewhat disappointing, but I wasn't too upset because I thought the inspection was enough to force the seller to make a concession.
The seller was unwilling to make a concession. His standpoint was that the system works, so there was no need to do any work. Jodie and I felt the seller should make concessions because based on the inspection results we felt the system was inadequate for the size of the house and unmaintainable because of the metal tank. It seemed to us that we'd be stuck with a large bill to replace the system, if not right away, then probably before we could sell the house.

Jodie, our real estate agent, and I met with the seller's original septic inspector, who inspected the septic a year ago. These septic people painted a much better picture. Saying the system does work now and is serviceable. They have in fact pumped it many times. They claimed the problem with metal tanks was the cover collapsing and this septic has a concrete cover.

Jodie and I still didn't feel too great about the septic system. Even if it works, it's too small and we'd likely have problems in the future. We weren't happy with the seller, who had bought the place a year earlier, made some updates, and was basically just trying to make as much money as possible. So we decided to spend the rest of the day looking at other houses on the market to see what our other options were.

We ended up finding another house in Hooksett for the same asking price. We made an offer, and ended up getting the house for the same price as the first one, with some money back for closing. The house has more finished space than the first house and has lots of storage space (2 garages) and a lot of land (5.5 acres, though some of it is wetlands). We're very excited.