Should you get a sewer scope before buying
The one defect a standard home inspection does not look for, what it costs to check, and what it costs not to.
A standard home inspection is a visual inspection. It looks at what can be seen, and the sewer lateral running underground from the house to the municipal connection cannot be seen. On most purchases it is therefore the single largest unexamined liability in the transaction.
The arithmetic
A standalone sewer camera inspection with cleanout access is published at $125 to $500. Adding it to a home inspection brings the combined price to $400 to $750, against $125 to $500 for the sewer scope alone.
A sewer lateral replacement is a five-figure job in most markets, involving excavation across a yard, a driveway or a street. The asymmetry between a few hundred dollars of checking and a five-figure repair is about as favourable as due diligence gets.
Source: HomeGuide, Sewer Camera Inspection Cost, 2026
When it moves from sensible to essential
- The property was built before the 1980s, where clay, cast iron and Orangeburg laterals are common and all have known failure modes.
- There are mature trees between the house and the street. Roots find sewer lines, reliably.
- The property has been vacant, where problems go unnoticed and unreported.
- There is any history of backups, slow drains or sewage smell, however casually mentioned.
- The house has been flipped. Cosmetic renovation does not touch the lateral, and a fresh interior can sit above an unchanged problem.
- The seller's disclosure mentions plumbing work without specifying what was done.
How to use the result
A clean scope is worth the money for the certainty. A scope that finds something is worth considerably more, because it converts an unknown into a priced negotiation.
Get the recorded footage and the distances to each defect, not just a verdict. If you are negotiating a repair credit, the other side will want to see it, and you may want a second opinion on whether the recommendation is a spot repair, a lining or a full replacement. Those three differ by an order of magnitude.