Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois

1. Most home inspections do not include a complete inspection of outgoing sewer lines. That is specialized. Should your home inspector have told you that? Maybe, but now you have to look at the home inspection report/contract and see what is included, excluded, and disclaimed.

2. And then again where is the disclosure that is mandatory (unless it was a bank sale or an estate sale....???) Among other things it asks specifically if the owner knows of any material defect in the "sewer" line. How is that checked -- no? If the sewer had been replaced and this was noted, then maybe there was no lie. Or the owners knew they had to rod frequently because of the number of trees on site, and preferred that to cutting down the trees when the line was replaced.

-- Any older home with any trees on site probably has tree roots growing into the sewer line. And the drier things are climate-wise, the harder the trees try to get into the line. And once they are into the line, the only things you can do is (a) periodically have the lines rodded, or (b) cut the trees down and replace the line -- because if you just cut the trees down the roots will die and the line will become like swiss cheese -- at a certain point the roots often are the only things preventing collapse.

-- Other than that, if you are a first time buyer, welcome to the world of home maintenance. Still, the broker will do nothing after closing because the broker is protected by the disclosure form unless the broker participated in a fraud and just go ahead and try to prove that, and if anything you might have someone look at the home inspector's paperwork and find out if a sewer line inspection (including videography) would have been reasonable given the site conditions and whether the failure to recommend that was professional negligence.....