"How Do I Get the Well Water Letter My Lender Wants in Louisiana?"

You order it from the Louisiana Department of Health, through the state's own private well testing portal, by choosing the Water and Sewer Approval Request for Loan Letter. A sanitarian from your parish health unit comes out to the property, draws the sample and carries it to the state laboratory. The department then writes the letter and sends it to you and to your lender.

I'm Jeff Moran, a mortgage broker in Bluffton, South Carolina, originating since 1996, licensed in fifteen states, including Louisiana, NMLS #483943, through C2 Financial Corporation.

A lot of the homes outside the Louisiana metros run on a private well. The condition that shows up on the loan approval usually reads something like "satisfactory water test before funding," and that sentence does not say who performs it, where the sample goes, or how long any of it takes. Louisiana answers all three differently from most of the country, and the Louisiana answer is a service the state runs itself, once you know which office to call.

Why does a lender ask for a water test when Louisiana does not?

Private water wells are unregulated in Louisiana. The Department of Health says so directly on its real estate well testing requirements page. The owner is responsible for the maintenance, care and testing of the well, and no test is required by the state when a property is sold. The department recommends that owners test for total coliform and E. coli at least once a year.

A lender is asking whether the property has a continuing supply of safe water, and that question gets asked no matter what a state requires of the owner. The department's own page acknowledges this, noting that lenders often require some form of testing for real estate transfers and may look to the rules of the state where the sale is happening. In Louisiana there is no state sale rule to look to, so the health department built a service to fill the gap.

What a loan is actually asking about a property on private systems, and where that language comes from, is covered on what to check on a well and septic before you make an offer. This page is the Louisiana half: who does the work here, and when.

Who is allowed to draw the sample in Louisiana?

You cannot collect the water sample yourself, and neither can the seller or the listing agent. A well test has to be collected and transported by a disinterested third party, which is the national standard. So a sample the seller drew themselves cannot be used, no matter how good the result is.

In Louisiana the state itself will be that third party. When you order the Water and Sewer Approval Request for Loan Letter through the department's private well testing portal, a sanitarian visits the home, collects the sample and transports it to the laboratory for analysis. Sanitarians are department staff based in the health unit of each parish, and among other things they run the permitting system for onsite sewage treatment.

That arrangement takes an entire argument off the table, because nobody with a stake in the sale ever touches the bottle. The portal shows the current charge for the service at the time you place the order.

What does the state laboratory's schedule do to your closing date?

The laboratory runs on a fixed calendar, and that calendar is worth knowing before a contract sets a closing date.

Private water samples are tested Monday through Thursday of each week, excluding holidays, at 2 p.m. A sample also cannot be more than 30 hours old, measured from the time it was collected, when it is tested. Sample results are usually returned to the sanitarian within 48 hours, and the department drafts the letter after that and provides it to the owner and to the lender.

Those two limits work together. The collection visit has to land close enough to a testing day that the sample is still inside its 30 hours when the laboratory runs it. A sample drawn on a Thursday afternoon has no run available until the following Monday, and by Monday it is well outside that window. So an order placed late in the week will usually wait through the weekend before the sample can be run at all, and the letter still has to be written after the results come back.

The timing only becomes a problem when nobody looks at the water condition until late in the file. By the time an appraisal comes back, the closing date is on the calendar and a rate lock is running, and the laboratory is still only testing four days a week. Ordering in the first week of the contract leaves room for all of it, alongside everything else that has to happen between contract and closing.

What the loan letter does not cover

The order described above is a bacteria test. It answers total coliform and E. coli, and that is what most lender conditions on a Louisiana well are asking for.

If the condition also asks for chemistry, meaning lead, nitrates, arsenic or anything similar, that work is not part of the same order. The department keeps a current list of certified laboratories on its website for exactly that reason, and the sample goes to one of those laboratories on its own schedule. You would be placing two orders with two separate turnarounds, and only the bacteria half is handled by the state.

So the exact wording of the lender's condition is worth reading closely on the day it arrives. A condition that says "water test" and one that says "water test including chemistry" send you to two different places.

Where does the sewer half of the letter come from?

The service is called a Water and Sewer Approval, and the sewer half is handled in the same parish office.

Under Louisiana's sanitary code for sewage disposal, La. Admin. Code tit. 51, Part XIII, §701, a person may not install, cause to be installed, alter after installation, or operate an individual sewerage system of any kind without first having a permit from the state health officer. The installer notifies the parish health unit before the work starts, and the sanitarian does not issue final approval on the system until a completed and signed certification from the installer is in hand.

So the record of whether the septic system at your address was ever permitted, and whether it received that final approval, lives with the same parish health unit that sends someone out for the water sample. You can ask about both halves on one phone call, and the onsite wastewater program page names the parish offices.

What should you do, and in what order?

Most of this works best while you are still comparing homes, and the order below is the one that keeps the calendar out of trouble.

You will want to read the listing and the seller's disclosure for the water source. The words to look for are plain ones: well, shared well, cistern, spring. They usually appear in the listing remarks or in the seller's property disclosure, and the water source is one of the first things a loan file asks about on a country property.

It is worth asking your loan officer in writing exactly which results the file will need. Something like: when you get a chance, please tell me exactly which water results this file needs, including any chemistry work such as lead, nitrates or arsenic, so that I can order the right test the first time. A condition that says only "water test" deserves one clarifying email before you spend a week on the wrong order.

The order belongs on the department's portal early in the contract, and the Water and Sewer Approval Request for Loan Letter is the option that brings the sanitarian visit and the letter together.

It is worth asking the parish health unit for the sewerage permit and the final approval record for the address while you have them on the phone. If neither one exists, that is worth knowing while the inspection period is still open.

The well and the septic system belong in the contingency language by name. A general inspection contingency is standard. Language covering what happens if the water comes back needing treatment, or if the sewerage system was never finally approved, only goes into a contract when somebody writes it in. On a property with private systems, you will want to ask for it by name.

Where does this go wrong most often?

Waiting for the appraisal to raise the water source. By then the file is weeks along with money committed, and the laboratory's calendar has not moved.

Treating "no state requirement" as "nothing is needed." The state has no test requirement when a property is sold. The lender's requirement is a separate one, and it applies to the property securing the loan.

Ordering the bacteria test when the lender asked for chemistry as well. The second order starts from zero on the day you discover it.

Accepting a test the seller had run before listing. Leaving aside who collected it, a water report has an age limit on the loan side, and a test from earlier in the year can fall outside that limit by the time a purchase actually closes.

Assuming the septic system was approved because it works. A system working today does not tell you whether the parish health unit ever issued the final approval on it, and that answer only exists in the office records.

An illustration, so the sequence is clear

Numbers and details below are made up to show the mechanism.

A buyer goes under contract on a home on four acres north of Hammond, with a drilled well and a septic system. The approval comes back carrying a condition that reads "satisfactory water test before funding." Instead of forwarding it and waiting, the buyer emails the loan officer and asks which results the file needs. The answer comes back that day: coliform and E. coli, no chemistry.

That afternoon they place the order on the state portal and choose the loan letter option. The sanitarian schedules the visit for the following Tuesday morning, which puts the sample in front of the laboratory on a testing day and well inside its 30 hours. While the sanitarian is out, the buyer asks the parish health unit for the sewerage permit, and learns the system was permitted in 2011 and finally approved that same year.

The results reach the sanitarian that Thursday, and the letter goes to the lender the following week with the closing date untouched.

The same file with the water question raised after the appraisal runs a lot tighter. The condition surfaces on a Wednesday, the order goes in Thursday, the visit lands the week after that, and by then the closing date is the thing being discussed.

What to do now

If you are looking at a Louisiana home on a private well, the water source belongs in the first conversation with your loan officer, and the parish health unit is the office that answers both halves of it.

Then you can price the purchase and know what the payment looks like before the offer. You can see the numbers on the rate tool without a credit pull and without an account, and choose the option that works best for you. The well and the septic system are worth raising during pre-approval, because that is early enough to order the letter around the laboratory's calendar instead of around your closing date. What a Louisiana pre-approval involves is here.

Two other Louisiana pages are worth reading alongside this one. How a Louisiana closing actually works covers civil law, notaries and witnesses, and whether you can sign remotely. And once you own the home, the homestead exemption is an application you make yourself at the parish assessor. If a water result comes back needing correction, who can require a repair under contract covers that ground.

Common questions

Does Louisiana require a well water test when a house is sold?

No. Private water wells are unregulated in Louisiana, and the Department of Health places responsibility for maintenance, care and testing on the owner. The department recommends that owners test for total coliform and E. coli at least once a year. Nobody has to do it before a sale. A lender financing the purchase can still require a test, and most of them do when the property is on a private well.

Who collects the water sample for a mortgage in Louisiana?

A sanitarian from the Department of Health. When the Water and Sewer Approval Request for Loan Letter is ordered through the state's private well testing portal, a sanitarian visits the home, collects the sample and transports it to the laboratory. That matters because the sample has to be collected and transported by a disinterested third party on the loan side, so a sample taken by the buyer, the seller or an agent cannot be used.

How long does the Louisiana loan letter take?

Each part has its own clock. The laboratory tests private well samples Monday through Thursday, excluding holidays, at 2 p.m., and a sample cannot be more than 30 hours old when it is tested. Results are usually back to the sanitarian within 48 hours, and the department drafts the letter afterward for the owner and the lender. The collection visit also has to be scheduled, so the whole sequence takes days, and an order placed late in the week picks up the weekend.

Does the loan letter include a lead or arsenic test?

It does not. The loan letter order covers total coliform and E. coli bacteria. Chemistry work such as lead, nitrates or arsenic goes to a certified laboratory, and the Department of Health keeps a current list of them on its website. If the lender's condition asks for chemistry, that becomes a second order on a separate timeline, which is a good reason to read the exact wording of the condition on the day it arrives.

Where do I find the septic permit for a Louisiana property?

At the parish health unit for the parish the property is in. Under La. Admin. Code tit. 51, Part XIII, §701, an individual sewerage system cannot be installed, altered after installation or operated without a permit from the state health officer, and the parish sanitarian issues the final approval once the installer's signed certification is in hand. Both the permit and the final approval are records that office holds, and they are worth asking for by address while the inspection period is still open.