Selling a No Permits House

[Anonymous]

You check the box for inspection when you write your offer. The seller can accept the offer, reject the offer, or negotiate.

Before you even write an offer, go to the house and test everything yourself. Turn on every light, run every faucet, see if hot water comes out, turn on the heat and A/C. Look for water damage or bad smells. You can tell a lot by doing this. If it works, then you're probably fine.

Then if you're satisfied, write an offer with an inspection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cosmetically, our house looked great; the problems we found later were major and expensive to correct (think vertically venting hot water heater DIY vented horizontally with dryer vent tubing).

Always make sure the work was permitted.

Lots of contractors do shoddy permitted work too. There's no guarantee, but a good inspector should catch the stuff you can see.

[Anonymous]

OP, I will give you benefit of the doubt that you don’t know how permits work. Just because a permit is pulled doesn’t mean that the work was done properly- for most, there’s no inspection done as part of the process. So having a permit is not a guarantee of good work, and not having a permit doesn’t mean the work was poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Permits are are mostly so they county can charge you more property taxes on home improvements.

Agreed. The contractor can pull permits, do terrible work, and get a third party inspection that just signs off on whatever. No different than if they never pulled a permit at all. Permits really aren’t going to stop crappy contractors from doing crappy work.

[Anonymous]

The main risk to buyer from unpermitted work is that when buyer goes to start a new renovation that requires a permit, the county may require additional work to bring the old stuff up to code. Honestly this is not uncommon even with older permitted work though so I'd only worry if buyer plans a large renovation quite soon.

Buyer should get a really good inspector to catch any issues from the DIY, but no inspector catches everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I will give you benefit of the doubt that you don’t know how permits work. Just because a permit is pulled doesn’t mean that the work was done properly- for most, there’s no inspection done as part of the process. So having a permit is not a guarantee of good work, and not having a permit doesn’t mean the work was poor.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Permits are are mostly so they county can charge you more property taxes on home improvements.

Well that, and to limit the chances your house blows up or burns down. Bike helmets and seat belts are just silly, too.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t had inspections done by 3rd parties who DGAF. Permits are useless in assuring good workmanship.

[Anonymous]

For that matter most home inspections aren’t worth much either.

[Anonymous]

OP and thanks. DH and I have talked about buying his house and moving a few houses down. It’s a bit larger than ours.

[Anonymous]

Some people rather have a no permit house. My sister owned a house with an 600 sf addition and extra bath. I permits.

She was taxed as a 2,600 sf house with 2.5 baths vs a 3,200 house with 3.5 baths.

It sold quickly.

[Anonymous]

How would insurance react if house was damaged due to a no-permit modification ? Would that still be a covered event ?