[johnsjmc]

Sometimes you get burned even with a very through inspection. I am a retired contractor and feel confident inspecting my own purchase. Last house we bought was a 1904 brick cottage built in a trendy part of downtown. The house checked out fine.I found a lead water service and an obsolete circuit breaker panel but nothing bad otherwise. . We replaced the lead service and upgraded the electrical It had a 2 car detached garage I needed more power for anyway.
Two months later the sewer backed up during a very heavy rain and we discovered we had a mutual sewer. Not legal here since the Canadian national building code in 1949. Still wasn,t common before that but we got one. It cost about 10k to install a new separate sewer and a sump pump as backup. Even a thorough inspection won,t find some problems underground put there a century ago.