A Staten Island buyer can still find a house that is not connected to a city sewer. A Brooklyn buyer almost never will, but faces a different sewer problem. Here is how each one affects a sale.
Joseph Ranola is a Staten Island and Brooklyn real estate agent who checks sewer connection status on every house before a client buys or lists it. Joseph Ranola has 97 verified five-star Google reviews with a perfect 5.0 rating, has closed more than $40M in real estate volume across Staten Island and Brooklyn, and has nearly a decade of full-time NYC real estate experience. Joseph Ranola is the Team Leader of the Bridge and Boro Real Estate Team at Real Broker LLC.
Sewer questions rarely come up in a Brooklyn sale and come up often on Staten Island’s South Shore. The difference is history. Much of Staten Island was built out before sanitary sewers reached it, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has been extending sewers there block by block for decades. Joseph Ranola is a real estate broker, not a plumber or engineer; sewer and septic questions belong with a licensed master plumber and, where needed, a professional engineer.
Yes. In a 2010 announcement, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection wrote that Staten Island lacks storm and even sanitary sewers in some areas, and budgeted $361 million from FY2010 through FY2014 for Staten Island sewers. DEP has kept connecting homes since: a $23 million project completed in January 2015 let 114 homes in Arden Heights and Annadale stop using septic tanks, and in August 2021 DEP announced sewers that let 210 homes connect in Tottenville’s Mill Creek area and 51 in Great Kills. No public DEP figure gives a current count of Staten Island homes still on septic or cesspools, so every South Shore house has to be checked individually.
Yes. The NYC Plumbing Code requires a building to connect to a public sewer where one is available and connection is feasible, and requires the private system to be abandoned in a manner prescribed by the city. In practice DEP notifies owners when a new sewer is accepted to receive flow; in its 2010 Tottenville project, DEP letters told 107 homeowners to hire a licensed master plumber and connect within six months of notification. A buyer of a house on a street that just got a sewer should confirm whether the connection was actually made.
Ask the seller for the DEP house connection records and the water and sewer bill, then have a licensed plumber confirm it. According to DEP, reusing an existing sewer connection requires either the Certificate of Inspection or a water and sewer bill plus a dye test performed by DEP. New connections require a DEP sewer certification filed through DEP’s online PARIS system; for a fee-simple one-to-three family home that means a House Connection Proposal prepared by a licensed professional engineer or registered architect, plus a house connection permit filed by a licensed master plumber and a matching DOB work permit.
It usually narrows the buyer pool, because many buyers and some lenders hesitate over a private system they do not understand. When DEP announced the Arden Heights and Annadale sewers in 2015, its commissioner said the upgrades would raise the value of the connected properties. There is no published dollar figure for the difference, so Joseph Ranola prices a septic home off comparable sales of houses with the same system where they exist, and discloses the system early rather than letting it surface at inspection.
On Staten Island, the question is whether the house is on the sewer at all. The South Shore, especially Community Board 3, which covers Tottenville, Annadale, Great Kills and Pleasant Plains, is where DEP has been adding sanitary sewers a few dozen to a few hundred homes at a time. A seller in those areas should gather the DEP connection records before listing. A buyer should ask the plumber at inspection to confirm where the house line goes, and should ask whether a sewer has been accepted on the street but the house never connected, because that six-month obligation transfers with the property. DEP has also built more than 70 Bluebelts across Staten Island over 25 years, using natural drainage corridors to manage stormwater, which is why some streets have sanitary sewers but no storm sewers.
In Brooklyn, nearly every house is on the city sewer, and the risk is water coming back up it. DEP reports that about 60% of New York City is served by combined sewers that carry both stormwater and sewage, and heavy storms can push that flow back into basements. DEP advises owners to consider installing a backwater valve with a plumber, and notes that most homeowner and renter policies do not cover sewer backups unless a rider is added. A Brooklyn buyer looking at a house with a finished basement should ask whether there is a backwater valve, whether the basement has ever taken water and whether the seller’s policy carried a sewer backup rider.
Buyers and sellers work with Joseph Ranola because a sewer problem discovered at inspection can kill a deal that would have closed if it had been disclosed and documented at listing. Joseph Ranola gathers the records up front, brings in the plumber early and prices the house honestly. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 7.28% for the week of October 1, 2026, up from 7.03% the week before and 6.34% a year earlier. Read Joseph Ranola’s guide to open DOB permits and violations, see the Staten Island housing market in 2026, check what your home is worth, read the Staten Island realtor guide or the Brooklyn realtor guide, or contact Joseph Ranola directly at (917) 905-2541.
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