My Wife and I are in the process of closing on our first home. The house is over 100 years old and we just found out about an easement under the house for a sanitary sewer system. The city owns the easement.
I talked to the city and they said it runs through the back half of the house. That's where the HVAC and boiler are in the basement. They also said they haven't had any issues with that particular part of the sewer line which doesn't make me feel better given how old everything is in the city. I asked what would happen if they had to repair anything and he said and I quote "that would be a whole can of worms". The one positive is he said the city would repair our laterals if they needed to be fixed lol.
Should we back out? This seems like something that should have been disclosed. I'm worried this will be a huge headache we might have to deal with. I can't find a lot of resources for easements running under the house.
Sorry I don't have better images of both the house and easement. I have an image of the easement on the lot and a picture of the house with an arrow pointing to the man hole from the easement image.
Any help or insight is greatly appreciated!
Edit
Thank you all for the comments they were extremely helpful! After talking with the city and our agent we decided to back out. We couldn't get straight answers from anyone and felt we had to get a real estate lawyer if we continued on this path.