Outside town, most St. Joseph County homes are on a well and septic — inspect before you buy

Sturgis, Three Rivers, and the village centers have municipal water and sewer, but across most of St. Joseph County’s townships, homes run on a private well for drinking water and a septic system for waste. If you’re moving from a city, that’s a real change: the well and the septic are yours to maintain, and a failed septic drain field can cost many thousands of dollars to replace.

Here’s the part worth knowing. Michigan is the only state in the country without a statewide septic code — the rules are set locally, county by county — and St. Joseph County doesn’t require a well or septic inspection when a home is sold, even though some Michigan counties do. The Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency does offer a well-and-septic evaluation specifically for home sales, and it keeps the permit records, but nobody checks these systems for you automatically at closing. So it’s smart to make your own well-water test and septic inspection part of your offer rather than assuming the system is sound.