The sewer lateral . . .

Lorri and Lisa, eagerly anticipating closing on the purchase of their first home, pack up and vacate their apartment in New York for the big move to Pittsburgh to help their mothers...  

The timeline is tight -- they have just a few days turnaround time to get to Pittsburgh, close the sale, and await the multiple moving vans that are bringing all their belongings to their new home.  They have nowhere to live until the house sale is closed, so they stay in a hotel for what they expect to be less than a week, with the closing scheduled for July 1.  

But then... a funny thing happened on the way to the closing... 

And that funny thing is called a "sewer lateral" problem.

The "sewer lateral" is what connects the plumbing in the house to the public plumbing at the street or road.
In this case, the road was two acres away from the house.
Which means that two acres of lawn had to be ripped up to fix the problem.

June 24 ... Seller Mark Exler contacts Steve Orlando, of Orlando Plumbing, for an estimate on sewer repairs at 211 Hunt Road. Roz informs Lorri and Lisa that Mark is upset, once again, about the anticipated cost of this repair ($16K) but says that he will pay it and have the work done promptly as per well-known Fox Chapel Borough regulations -- or at least they're well-known to people who already live in Fox Chapel, like the Exlers. Not so much to newcomers like Lorri and Lisa.

No mention is made of the extent or the scope of the requisite work, which Roz dismissed as a pricey annoyance to be dealt with by Exler, not the buyers.

June 27 ... Mark Exler obtains a written estimate from Orlando Plumbing for completion of the sewer work.  That's right -- 3 days after Lorri and Lisa were informed of the repair estimate and just 4 days prior to their anticipated closing, the Exlers and their friend Roz were just getting around to the written estimate... No repairs started, no date planned.

June 29 ... Exler phones Lorri and they have a brief, reasonably pleasant chat. While he admits to a slight delay in the completion of the required sewer work, at no time does he acknowledge either the extent of the work, or the ways in which that would alter the face of the property (which, as it turned out, would entail digging up roughly 2 acres of ground and part of the basement in order to replace 350 feet of terra cotta pipe). 

This is what it looks like when they dig up your front lawn.
(Representative, not actual, picture of Hunt Road property.)  But that's pretty much what it looked like.

June 30 ... Lorri and Lisa obtain the mortgage commitment and are prepared to close as scheduled. However, on July 1, in the course of their appointment with the mortgage broker, they learn that the sewer work has not even begun and will not be done prior to closing, despite it being a contingency of the sale. In order to close at all, Fox Chapel Borough requires that repairs either be completed and inspected or that buyers assume unlimited liability for any and all costs associated with their completion.

And so, Lorri and Lisa are suddenly presented with an escrow agreement that Roz and the Exlers presume they will sign, accepting the aforementioned undisclosed conditions. They are flabbergasted, and with the mortgage broker's subtle encouragement, refuse to sign.

According to Roz, Lorri and Lisa are being unreasonable, making a big deal out of nothing. "Exler is good to his word," she says, and will surely place sufficient funds in escrow to cover the complete (but also completely unknown) actual costs -- beyond which, everyone knows about the sewer lateral agreement! (Except people like Lorri and Lisa who are coming from out of state, have never lived in Fox Chapel, and have never heard the words "sewer lateral" prior to this moment.)  

As Roz so helpfully put it, "well, everyone signs it." The mere fact that something supposedly so ordinary was at no time mentioned to Lorri and Lisa by Roz rouses their suspicions, but they try to proceed in good faith.

July 12 ... during negotiations, Lorri and Lisa are informed the sewer work is "essentially" (finally!) completed and the necessary borough approvals issued. All that remains to be done, they're told, is reseeding of the lawn on the acres of ground torn up for the trench.

During all this, Lorri and Lisa are forced to live out of a hotel room (a large and unexpected expense) with their two cats ... waiting and waiting and waiting ... for Roz Neiman, and Mark Exler, and his wife Robin Exler, to finally make good on what they promised to do, and to deliver the house that Lorri and Lisa have purchased.

But guess what?  Upon entering the house after closing on July 21 -- yes, that's right, the closing that was supposed to have happened three weeks earlier -- Lorri and Lisa discovered the sewer work had actually not been completed at all, since the basement was not restored to its previous condition, and the earth was torn up all around the house and down the lawn, all the way to the road.  The place was, in short, a mess.  This is not the house or the property they were paying for, and Lorri and Lisa are very upset.

Later, Lisa notices that the sewer work closest to the house again shows signs of sinking.

Roz says it's nothing to worry about, and that the sewer lateral work is just fine...

So why did it smell so bad and keep sinking and all that?

Stinky, Costly Sewer - Thanks, Roz!!

The "perfect" patio . . .

June 14 ... Lorri and Lisa ask Roz Neiman of Howard Hanna Real Estate -- who is supposed to be representing them as their agent -- to doublecheck on the backyard patio for them, to make sure it's in good shape, especially because -- as Roz knew from prior houses they'd looked at -- this was a big concern for Lisa, especially, because her mother had recently had disabling back surgery and had continued movement difficulties.  Lorri's mother was also elderly and had fallen and broken bones recently, so they wanted to make sure it would be safe for both of their elderly mothers to walk across without tripping, and they thought they had remembered seeing some loose tiles at the last visit.

June 17 ... Mark Exler informs Roz Neiman that he has ordered a new patio for 211 Hunt Road and queries whether Lorri and Lisa would like to have it put in -- at their expense! After final negotiations on June 19, Roz claims to have stated to Exler, “The girls feel very strongly they ought to have the patio installed as a condition of the sale.”

June 20 ... Mark Exler accepts Lorri's and Lisa's offer on the house. Having heard nothing more about the patio since Roz’s report of her forceful advocacy on their behalf, Lorri and Lisa assumed that the patio was included in the final sales agreement. This same sales agreement was not received by Lorri and Lisa until well after the fact, however; instead of being sent to them, Roz sent it to the mortgage broker... who just happened to be a longtime friend and client of Mark Exler.

July 1 ... Lisa and Lorri learn, after the fact -- i.e., after their offer was accepted -- that the patio is in fact not a part of the sales agreement as Roz had led them to believe. The next day, they walk across the patio with Roz Neiman and her husband Sandy Neiman, reminding Roz of her "perfect patio" comments as they step on one loose, broken tile after another, making for a very tense situation. Neither of them is very pleased with the comments being made, and neither does a very good job of hiding it, though Roz naturally makes a greater effort.

July 28 ... Three Rivers Inspection determined that the patio is almost completely dislodged from its moorings and is urgently in need of replacement with tiles actually intended for outdoor use -- as opposed to the cheap, interior tiles that the Exlers used.  

And once again, Lisa and Lorri learn that the house they've been suckered into buying by Howard Hanna's "top agent" and her friends and clients Mark Exler and his wife Robin Exler (co-owner of the Squirrel Hill Flower Shop) is not the house they thought they were buying.

Another Potemkin Village -- hey, thanks, Roz!