Considering buying a home w/ a Cesspool...

It'll be fine, just budget about $25,000 to remove the cesspool, clean up afterward, and install a small septic system.

 

I live in the eastern part of long island and my house has a cespool. it was the original one made of bricks back in the 60's. We bought our house fro a lady who lived alone for 30 years, so for the firts 5 years we had no problems with the cespool. all my neighbors were having their's replaced. one saturday morning I notice it was starting to overflow a bit in my shower in the downstairs. I had it pumped, cost a few hundred. the brick can collapse so with 2 little kids running across the yard all the time my wife and I decided to replace them with precast concrete. the job cost about 3 grand for the main pool and an over flow. about a hundred for top soil and just bought grass seed, and a year later you can't tell it was replaced. and the precast concrete don't collapse. My neighbor has had his pumped once since replacing it 6 years ago, but he has 3 teenage kids who take long showers and do a lot of laundry..... you can put some hemicals in your toilet every few months to hep out the breakdown of the "stuff" in the pool to prolong getting it pumped.....

 

Unless they can prove it was a pre cast replacement, there is no way to accurately determine how long a cesspool will last.
I was putting on an extension on a house built in 1950. Part of the extension was to include a big jacuzzi in the bathroom. I called two reputable cesspool companies to give me their opinion on the state of my cesspool. First guy comes and tells me the cesspool in in the back of my house and is in bad shape. The next day the other guy comes and tells me the cesspool was in the front of my house and was in bad shape. When he told me this I mentioned what the other guy told me. His exact words were "if I could see underground I'd be in gold, not s*it". I gave him the job.