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permit and inspection question
DH and I bought a house 4 years ago. It was built in '52 and was completely remodeled when we bought it. It passed the city inpsection required and completed by the sellers and no major issues found by the inspector we hired prior to purchasing. DH and I are no looking to rent out the house and the city inspector came today for the inspection to confirm it's ok to list to rent.
The inspector informed us that when the previous owners remodeled the house they pulled ZERO permits. The city inspector who inspected the house 4 years ago and approved everything and has since been fired. Now for us to pass the inpsection we have to apply for permits and tear down sheetrock for the inspector to come back and inspect the plumbing and electrical.
Has anyone else been in this situation? Any advice?
Re: permit and inspection question
Wow, that really sucks. I haven't been in that situation before, in fact, I've never heard of a city requiring an inspection before a home can be sold or rented. Maybe it's a regional thing. Anyway, if I were you, I would talk to a real estate/construction attorney to see if it's possible for you to be grandfathered in with respect to the repairs and remodeling done by your sellers because you received city approval on the remodeling when you bought the house. Your reliance on that approval was reasonable -- how were you supposed to know the inspector was sketchy and going to be fired 4 years later? It's the city's fault for not regulating their inspectors more closely, not yours.
The thing is, if you ever plan on selling this house, you're probably going to have to get the permits and have the inspections then because the new buye rprobably wont want to deal with the non-permitted repairs. So maybe you're better off sucking it up and trying to deal with it now. Maybe you could at least talk the city into not charging you for the permits, given the circumstances.
Thanks. We have a call out to our REA for the current house we're buying. We either have to deal with it now or in x years when we go to sell the house so we'll probably just deal with it now.
We were looking into buying a house with an unpermitted addition. One of the realtors recommended getting a neighbor to report the unpermitted addition to the city, which would fast track an inspection and usually results in the grandfather-ing in of the nonexistent permit. I don't know if that is the case in most cities, though.
If that didn't work, my realtor said that we'd end up having to tear down most of the walls so that the insides could be inspected. That would be a costly operation, the estimate we saw for that work was $25k for a two story, 600 sq ft addition (cost was to remove drywall, correct issues to bring things to code, and then put everything back together).
The city I work in requires an inspection of a home when it is bought or sold or when there are new tenants coming in. It's really a good thing, the housing here is ridiculously cheap and a lot of times the homes are in disrepair and are required to be fixed before the new tenants move in.