Last month I stood in a driveway off Baltimore Drive in La Mesa watching a plumber feed a camera down a cleanout. The house was a 1956 ranch, three bedrooms, original hardwood under the carpet, the kind of place that gets three offers by Monday. My buyers loved it. The camera found a clay sewer line with a root ball the size of a grapefruit about forty feet out, right under the front lawn.
That inspection cost them around $300. The repair bid came back just under $15,000.
Here's my opinion, and I'll say it plainly. If you're buying anything built before 1975 in La Mesa or El Cajon, the sewer scope is not optional. I'd rather you skip the home warranty and put that money toward the camera. A warranty covers the dishwasher. It doesn't cover the pipe under the yard, and that pipe is the single most expensive surprise I see in this part of the county.
Why here specifically? The streets around Lake Murray, the hills climbing toward Mount Helix, the older blocks of El Cajon between Main Street and Madison Avenue. These were built in a twenty-year stretch after the war, and the sewer laterals were clay. Clay lasts a long time, then it doesn't. Sixty years of pine and ficus roots hunting for water will find every joint.
Your general home inspector won't catch this. They run the faucets, flush the toilets, and note that everything drains. It does, right up until it doesn't. A separate plumber with a camera is the only way to know what's actually down there.
Two things I tell buyers. Order the scope in the first few days of your inspection period, not the last. If it finds something, you need time to get a repair bid and go back to the seller with a real number. And ask for the video file. Not the summary page, the actual footage. When you're negotiating a credit, the listing agent will want to see the root ball, not read about it.
My buyers on Baltimore Drive got a $10,000 credit and closed anyway. There's a fresh strip of sod down the middle of that lawn now.