Your Township Doesn't Require a Septic Inspection. Your Buyer's Lender Does.

Every spring, a seller with a stone colonial in Villanova or Radnor calls their agent with the same question: does the township make me get my septic inspected before I list? They ask because a neighbor mentioned it, or because the phrase "point of sale inspection" showed up in a Facebook group for people selling on well and septic in Delaware County.

The honest answer is that Pennsylvania has no statewide law requiring a septic inspection when you sell a home. Whether your specific municipality has adopted one is a real question, and the answer varies township by township. But that question, the one sellers spend the most time worrying about, is usually the wrong one to be asking. The system that actually decides whether an inspection happens isn't your township. It's your buyer's mortgage.

The rule that isn't there

Pennsylvania regulates septic systems through Act 537, the state's Sewage Facilities Act, but enforcement of that law happens locally, not from Harrisburg. Some townships and boroughs across the state have written their own point-of-sale ordinances that require an inspection before a deed can transfer. Plenty of others have never touched the issue. If you own a home on the outer edge of the Main Line, in the lower-density corners of Radnor Township or the far western Main Line towns that sit in Chester County near West Chester where public sewer never reached, the presence or absence of a local ordinance is genuinely a coin flip depending on which side of a township line your parcel sits.

That inconsistency is real, and it's also mostly beside the point.

A seller who confirms their township has no septic ordinance and stops there has learned something true and something useless in the same sentence.

The gatekeeper that actually matters

Here's what determines whether a septic inspection happens on your sale, regardless of what your township's code says: how your buyer is financing the purchase. FHA and VA loans, which cover a meaningful share of buyers in this price range once you get outside the estate section, almost always require a septic inspection as a condition of the mortgage itself. The lender isn't checking your municipal code. It's protecting the loan it's about to originate, and an unverified sewage system on a property it's about to hold a lien against is not a risk most lenders will absorb.

So even in a township with zero local requirement, a buyer walking in with FHA or VA financing will trigger the same inspection a point-of-sale ordinance would have required anyway. The township's silence buys you nothing if your buyer's loan officer has an opinion.

Pennsylvania's Seller Disclosure Law does the same work from a different angle. Under 68 Pa. C.S. § 7301 through 7315, sellers are required to complete a disclosure form that asks directly about the sewage system: its type, its age, the date it was last pumped, and whether it has ever malfunctioned. That obligation exists whether or not your township has an inspection ordinance. You are answering these questions the day you list, not the day an inspector shows up.

What the disclosure form actually pins you to:

• System type (conventional gravity, sand mound, aerobic treatment unit, or other)
• Approximate age and installation date, if known
• Date of last pumping
• Any history of backups, odors, or drain field failure
• Whether repairs or replacements have been made

Answer any of these incorrectly while knowing better, and you've created a liability that follows you past closing. Answer them honestly with a recent pump receipt in hand, and you've turned a disclosure form into a selling point.

Where the county changed the rules without telling anyone

Here's the detail that catches even experienced Main Line sellers off guard: who you call to sort any of this out changed a few years ago, and the change was quiet enough that most people haven't caught up.

As of June 1, 2023, the Delaware County Health Department took over responsibility for septic permitting, inspections, and enforcement for municipalities across the county, including Radnor Township. Before that date, a lot of this work ran through township offices directly. Now, if you need historical permit records for a system installed decades ago, or you're trying to figure out whether a repair needs county sign-off before you list, the number you want is the county health department, not the township engineering desk your parents might have called in 1995.

Chester County has run this function through its own county health department for longer, so sellers on the Chester County side of the Main Line, closer to West Chester, are dealing with a more established process. The practical friction shows up when an agent or seller assumes township-level authority still applies in Delaware County and burns a week chasing the wrong office before landing on the right one.

Radnor Township's own site still walks residents through the four-stage process for a septic permit (preliminary meeting, site evaluation, system design, and final inspection), which is useful background on how the system works. Just know that the person actually issuing the permit and the enforcement decision now sits at the county level.

What it actually costs, and when the clock starts

For sellers who want to get ahead of this instead of finding out about it mid-contract, here's what a realistic budget looks like:

One detail that surprises sellers of vacant or lightly-used properties: if the home has sat empty for more than seven days before the inspection, most protocols call for a hydraulic load test in addition to the standard visual and pump-out check, because an idle tank behaves differently than one in regular use. If you're prepping a vacant estate home for market, factor that timing into your inspection schedule rather than booking it the week before your first open house.

The move that changes your negotiating position

Sellers who order their own inspection before listing, rather than waiting for a buyer's lender to force the issue mid-contract, end up in a materially different negotiation. Here's the sequence that works:

1. Order a septic inspection before you list, not after you're under contract.
2. Request the property's permit history directly from the county health department (Delaware County or Chester County, depending on your municipality) rather than assuming your township still holds the file.
3. If the inspection turns up a fixable issue like a cracked baffle or overdue pumping, handle it before the home is live rather than negotiating it out of your proceeds later.
4. If a larger repair like drain field work is needed, this is exactly the kind of cost Compass Concierge is built to front, so the work gets done before your listing photos are taken instead of after a buyer's inspector finds it.
5. Keep the receipts. A disclosure form backed by documentation reads very differently to a buyer than one filled out from memory.

A seller who does this walks into their first showing with a system that's already been verified, a disclosure form that's already accurate, and a buyer's lender that has one less reason to slow things down. That's the entire advantage. It isn't about avoiding an inspection. It's about not being the last person in the transaction to find out one is happening.

Quick answers before you list

Does every home on the Main Line have well and septic? No. Most of the Main Line's denser, closer-in towns run on public water and sewer. Well and septic shows up mainly in the more spread-out sections of Radnor Township and similar lower-density corners of the Main Line where public lines never extended.

Who pays for the inspection, buyer or seller? In most Pennsylvania transactions, the buyer pays for the inspection as part of due diligence, while the seller typically covers pumping if it's needed as part of that inspection. If your specific municipality has a point-of-sale ordinance, the obligation can shift to the seller, so it's worth confirming with the county rather than assuming.

What happens if the system fails inspection? It doesn't automatically kill the deal, but it does change the conversation. Buyers typically ask for a price adjustment or a repair credit rather than walking away outright, especially for fixable issues like baffles or overdue pumping rather than a failed drain field.

If you're weighing a sale on a well and septic property anywhere along the Main Line, the details above are exactly the kind of groundwork worth doing before your home ever hits the market. Wagner Real Estate Group has spent four generations in these towns and knows which county office to call before your buyer's lender makes the ask for you. Get your free home valuation and let's talk about what your specific property needs before you list.