Selling in Lititz Borough: The Sewer Notice Your Disclosure Form Never Asks About

Most sellers in Lititz treat the Pennsylvania Seller's Property Disclosure Statement as the whole assignment. Fill in the boxes about the roof, the basement, the type of sewage system, sign it, hand it to the buyer's agent, move on to staging the living room. For the majority of transactions in the borough, that instinct is correct. The state form covers what it needs to cover.

But if your home sits on a sewer lateral that uses a grinder pump instead of gravity flow to reach the borough's main line, there's a second obligation that doesn't live on that form at all. It lives in the borough's own sewer code, and it has to be handled inside the sales agreement itself, not as a checkbox on a disclosure statement. Miss it, and you haven't just skipped a formality. You've left out something the ordinance specifically requires the buyer to be told before the ink dries.

The Form You Know, and the Code You Might Not

Pennsylvania's Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law asks a fairly direct question about sewage: is the property on public sewer, private sewer, a septic tank, a cesspool, or something else, and are you aware of any leaks or backups. That's it. One line, a few checkboxes, space to explain a "yes." It's designed to capture what the seller actually knows about the condition of the system, not to describe how the system is built or who owns which pipe.

Lititz Borough's sewer ordinance is a different animal. It doesn't ask about condition. It assigns responsibility, and where a grinder pump is involved, it requires the seller to say so in writing before the sales agreement is executed, not after, not on a separate disclosure form, but as language built into the contract itself.

What the Ordinance Actually Says

The borough's code is specific about this. An owner whose property is served by a grinder pump must put a prospective buyer "on notice of the grinder pump no later than the execution of the sales agreement," and that agreement has to reference the borough's own specifications and resolutions governing how those pumps are supposed to be installed and maintained.

The reason the borough cares this much comes down to who pays when something breaks. The ordinance is explicit that Lititz Borough carries no responsibility for the purchase, operation, repair, or replacement of a grinder pump. The property owner installs it, maintains it, repairs it, and eventually replaces it, at their own cost, for as long as they own the home. That obligation transfers with the deed. A buyer who finds out about the pump three weeks after closing, when it needs servicing, is not going to feel like the seller was forthcoming, and the ordinance is written to prevent exactly that scenario by forcing the disclosure into the sale itself.

Why This Doesn't Touch Every Borough Property

This isn't a borough-wide condition, and that matters for how a seller should think about it. Lititz Borough's code states that grinder pump use is evaluated case by case, and that the borough reserves the right to require gravity service wherever it's feasible, including asking a property owner to install whatever's needed to make gravity connection possible. In practice, that means pumped laterals tend to show up where the topography or the layout of a specific lot made gravity flow impractical, not as a default across the borough's housing stock.

The honest answer for most sellers is that they don't know offhand which category their home falls into. A house connected decades ago, before the current owner bought it, may have a pump system nobody's thought about since the last time it needed attention. Before you list, this is worth confirming rather than assuming. If your property was ever mentioned as having a "pump," a "lift station," or anything other than a straightforward gravity tie-in, that's the moment to ask the question in writing, not after an offer is already on the table.

Three Different Documents, Depending on Where the Line Falls

The reason this gets confusing is that a Lititz-area sale can touch as many as three separate disclosure regimes, and they don't overlap the way people assume.

Notice that two of the three live in the contract, not the disclosure form. That's the detail most closing checklists skip past, because "disclosure" gets used as shorthand for the one state form everyone's seen a hundred times.

Just Outside the Line, the Paperwork Changes Completely

Step across the borough boundary into Warwick Township and the sewage conversation often stops being about pumps and gravity lines and becomes about wells and on-lot septic instead. Borough properties are generally tied into municipal water and sewer. Properties outside it are far more likely to run on a private well and an on-lot septic system, which puts the transaction under Act 537 rather than the borough's sewer code.

Act 537 has its own contract-language requirements, and they're stricter in some ways than the borough's grinder pump notice. If the lot doesn't have access to a community sewage system, the contract has to say so plainly and tell the buyer to check with the local agency before signing. If the property runs on a holding tank, the contract has to disclose the annual maintenance cost history going back to installation or December 15, 1995, whichever is later. If the on-lot system was approved under a waiver of standard well isolation distances, the contract has to spell that out too. None of this shows up on the state disclosure form's single sewage-type line. It's a separate legal track that only applies once you're dealing with well and septic instead of municipal service, which is exactly the kind of thing that shifts the moment you cross from one side of a municipal boundary to the other.

Budgeting the Pre-Listing Check

None of this has to turn into a surprise if you build it into your prep instead of your closing week. Recent local project data puts the average property inspection cost in Lititz between $288 and $351, with a range of roughly $194 to $437 depending on the size and age of the home. A sewer scope add-on, which is the fastest way to confirm whether your lateral is gravity or pump-fed, and a septic inspection where applicable, are both modest additions to that base cost.

Spending a few hundred dollars before you list to confirm exactly what kind of system you have, and getting ahead of any grinder pump notice language your agreement will need, is a small cost against the alternative: a buyer's inspector finding the pump first, asking why it wasn't mentioned, and using the two weeks before closing to renegotiate instead of celebrate.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You List

How do I find out if my Lititz Borough home has a grinder pump? Start with the Lititz Borough Authority, which oversees the borough's sewer system, or ask a licensed plumber to check during a pre-listing sewer scope. If your home was built or connected recently, your original permit records may also note it.

Does the borough's grinder pump notice replace the state disclosure form? No. They serve different purposes and you need both where they apply. The state form discloses what you know about the property's condition. The borough requirement is about telling the buyer, in the contract, that a specific piece of equipment exists and whose responsibility it is going forward.

What if my home is on well and septic just outside the borough? You're likely working under Act 537 rather than the borough's sewer ordinance, which means the specific contract language depends on whether you have a standard on-lot system, a holding tank, or a system installed under a permit exemption. Your settlement company or real estate attorney can confirm which applies to your parcel.

Selling a home in Lititz means paying attention to which side of a line your address falls on, and in this case that line runs straight through your sewer connection. If you're preparing to list and aren't sure which disclosure track applies to your property, the team at Ian Hey and Associates can help you sort it out before it becomes a closing-week problem. Schedule a Consultation and let's get your paperwork right the first time.