Buford Road — The Septic Inspection We Insisted On
The Plan
Step one was getting our client out of the contract that wasn't working and onto Buford Road instead. Step two was going in with our eyes open about the septic system.
​
Septic has burned us before. We've seen inspections get glossed over, distribution boxes and drain fields that don't get a real look, and buyers who find out after closing that they've inherited a problem. So when a home we're representing a buyer on has a septic system, we treat the inspection as a step we don't skip and don't leave entirely to someone else's paperwork.
The Coordination
Under our contract, the seller is responsible for the septic inspection and for repairs up to a negotiated dollar amount. That's standard. What's not standard is having your buyer's agent show up in person to watch it happen — but given our history with septic surprises, that's exactly what we did.
​
We called in Jerry's Septic Tank Service and met Ben Sisler out at the property. Virginia's inspection standards for septic systems are stricter than a lot of buyers realize, and having a specialist walk the system while we watched meant nothing got glossed over. The inspection turned up one real issue: a distribution box lid that needed attention. The sellers fixed it, exactly as the contract called for, and that was that.
​
No drama, no surprise bill after closing, no "we'll deal with it later." Just a problem caught early, fixed by the party responsible for it, and documented before anyone signed anything final.
​The Result
Our client closed on Buford Road with a septic system she understood completely, a repair already handled, and a home close to her kids' schools — which was the whole point from the start.
​
This is the part of buyer representation that doesn't show up in a listing photo. It's showing up for the inspection, knowing which specialists actually catch problems, and reading a contract closely enough to know who's on the hook when something turns up. A distribution box lid is a small thing until it isn't — and the only way to know which one you've got is to be there.
The Situation
A past client of ours called wanting to move. She needed to be closer to her children's schools, and that meant a specific part of Chesterfield, not just "somewhere nice." We already had her under contract on a different home when the problems started piling up, and it became clear that house wasn't going to work out.
​
That's when we found 1103 Buford Road. Built in 1945, cute as a button, in good shape overall — and on a septic system instead of public sewer. Given some of the septic headaches we'd run into on other deals, that detail mattered.
What a Single Woman House-Hunting Alone Deals With
Representing one buyer is a job of keeping things honest and clear. Representing one buyer with a whole family closely involved is a job of doing that for everyone in the room at once, all of whom cared about her and all of whom saw risk a little differently.
​
What Heather and I tried to do every time was keep her at the center of it. Not the loudest voice, not whoever pushed hardest — her. We gave everyone the real numbers and the real risk, no sales pitch, and we told her straight every time an offer wasn't going to win. It's tempting in a hot market to talk a buyer into stretching further than she should just to finally win one. We didn't do that. We agreed, offer after offer, on what she could actually afford and was actually comfortable with, and we were willing to keep losing rather than push her past it.