THE POINT (OF POINT OF SALES)

Point of Sale requirements have gradually increased in recent years to present day standards, where the real estate transaction has in many ways become a checkpoint for a growing list of reporting and compliance items holding agents and sellers accountable to document various systems, and to generally bring them up to current code requirements.

Back in the early 1990’s, one of the tricks savvy agents would use for assessing the age of a home was to open the lid to the supply reservoir for the toilet, where you could usually find the date of manufacture. That went away with the implementation of water conservation and retrofit ordinances, which required all non-compliant toilets and shower heads to be replaced with water saving models when a home was sold.

Not long after that, many municipalities including our own began to implement legislation requiring that safety barriers be installed around the pool for any property that included one. Predictably, a cottage industry sprang up of providers who would sell and install a lightweight removable mesh barrier which met the requirement but could be easily pulled out when the pool was in active use.

Over time, most of our local municipalities have also implemented Point of Sale sewer lateral retrofit ordinances which require a camera inspection report to be turned into the governing agency for review. Any observed issues must be fixed by an approved vendor, with the responsibility for repair transferrable to the buyer in many cases, provided the work gets completed within a short timeframe after the sale. And in recent years, our County expanded the requirement to conduct and submit a standardized inspection on any property being sold that has a septic tank.

The latest Point of Sale inspection on our growing checklist is an ordinance that went into effect on January 1 of this year for all wells to be inspected and a water quality test to be submitted to the State. This ordinance lengthened flow test requirements to 3 hours (with certain exceptions allowed) from the prior general standard of 2 hours, and added more time for water quality testing than we have been accustomed to. Due to backlogs at the State these are taking an average of 21 days, but can be expedited to about half the time for a fee. And whereas the state assures us that the data from the submitted flow reports and water quality tests are collected for strictly informational purposes, it’s not much of a stretch to predict that retrofit and correction mandates may be lurking around the corner.

The overall intent of each of these Point of Sale ordinances is generally positive, but they do create an extra layer of diligence, costs and planning that we didn’t used to have to factor in. And yet, if the point is to improve the safety and quality of these systems for everyone—and to raise the standards of disclosure between buyers and sellers—then as I see it in the end, the extra effort is worthwhile, as long as you have the time and money to be able to comply.