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If our government records are so poor that we can't determine to a certainty whether something was permitted, inspected, and/or received a certificate of occupancy, then it seems to me all it takes is one or two ownership changes, and the passage of a few years' time, and the issue fades away ....
If you bought an old ranch house with a "rec room" wood paneled basement done in the 70s, would anyone be asking about permits?
If our government records are so poor that we can't determine to a certainty whether something was permitted, inspected, and/or received a certificate of occupancy, then it seems to me all it takes is one or two ownership changes, and the passage of a few years' time, and the issue fades away ....
If you bought an old ranch house with a "rec room" wood paneled basement done in the 70s, would anyone be asking about permits?
Our government records ARE that poor.
The tax roll data are useful for calculating property taxes, and that is their purpose. Anything else is a fairly benign misuse of the records.
And, the towns don't keep permits on record indefinitely, either.
Homeowners should keep all relevant records of improvements and additions.
We built a screen porch over a deck. We added a front porch. The interior dimensions of the house are unaltered.
Miraculously, Wake County increased our SF of living area by about 90SF at some point.
No idea what triggered that.
Are you sure the basement was finished later and not during construction? My thought is the house was marketed as "finished basement" just to be clear that the basement does not need to finished without intentionally alluding to the fact that is was recently, or after-the-fact finished.
I agree. I had buyers that purchased a townhome in Heritage. There was an unfinished room upstairs. As part of the contract, buyers had builder finish that room. I had that in my original paperwork.
When it came time to sell it, the buyer wanted proof that that room was permitted.
The problem was that Wake County didn't show that room in the square footage.
Lucky for us, the builder kept good records so we were able to show that he had all the documentation.
But, if the builder didn't have that and Wake County didn't have it, what would our options have been?
One suggestion was to consider it unpermitted and hire someone to permit it. But I thought that should be the buyers' expense.
As it turned out, buyers went ahead and purchased the townhome. Not sure if they did anything afterwards.
I really think you are putting too much stock in what the Wake Co site says. In my neighborhood now, as well as the previous one, we had houses with the same model floor plan and elevation, that had different SF listed. Some of a particular model are listed as 2 story, some as 1.5 even though all the houses are two story with a finished third floor "attic". (we have super steep roofs and there is actually attic space I can stand in above the third floor)
It may be that it was done without a permit, or maybe it was, but a discrepancy from the Tax site is no evidence at all either way.
Unfortunately, Wake County's website is wrong much of the time!
Recently, had a agent call about a home I had listed. According to him, imaps showed the house encroached upon the neighbor's house. And when I say "encroached", I mean home #1 was almost touching home #2!
My seller did not have a survey.
We talked to builder who said he didn't have the file anymore, since it was over 7 years old. But builder said he was SURE there was no encroachment.
Agent (who was the buyer) ordered survey. Survey is fine. There is no encroachment!
So...Wake County's websites are great to gather information but there are not always 100% correct.
Another reason why buyers should always order a new survey even though lenders no longer require it.
If our government records are so poor that we can't determine to a certainty whether something was permitted, inspected, and/or received a certificate of occupancy, then it seems to me all it takes is one or two ownership changes, and the passage of a few years' time, and the issue fades away ....
If you bought an old ranch house with a "rec room" wood paneled basement done in the 70s, would anyone be asking about permits?
That is pretty much exactly the way things are.
Municipalities only keep records going back so far, especially prior to digital plan submission, which most are not even doing yet now. Storage used to be way more expensive than it is now where you can get a 3 terabyte hard drive for $125.
And since the Wake County Revenue site is just for tax record purposes and not a catch all for every municipality's inspection records in the county (I think there are ten cities and towns and Wake county is only involved in the inspections process at all in 3 or 4 and that is just to perform the actual walk throughs, the rest have their own inspectors, IIRC) getting worked up over it is not productive.
Right.
And, if the work looks good with or without permitting, in a multiple offer situation someone else will want the house enough to not care about an iron-clad permit status.
This is the exact reason why I am not going to ask until under contract.
My only fear is if it really wasn't permitted, aren't I going to have trouble with lending during the appraisal?
Normally unfinished/unheated square footage is taxes at a much lower rate. Hence when folks finish a basement even if they do it 100% to code with licensed folk they often dont get a permit unless they plan on selling in the near future.
I bought my house it has a deck, bathroom and a dormer done without a permit. Bank could care less as it was extra space, owner point blank told me he did it this way as he did not want to pay the extra taxes.
I asked my lawyer what to do and he said no way he can get permits by closing so either walk away or we ask for 20K in escrow to be used for your to get permits afterwards. I can only use the 20K for permit related things. My inspector told me it looked to code so I went and bought anyhow. Took me a 40 hours or so of unpaid leg time but got the permits, paid for them out of escrow and released the funds. Lucky for me taxes based on purchase price not improvements so I did not get charged extra.
Normally unfinished/unheated square footage is taxes at a much lower rate. Hence when folks finish a basement even if they do it 100% to code with licensed folk they often dont get a permit unless they plan on selling in the near future.
I bought my house it has a deck, bathroom and a dormer done without a permit. Bank could care less as it was extra space, owner point blank told me he did it this way as he did not want to pay the extra taxes.
I asked my lawyer what to do and he said no way he can get permits by closing so either walk away or we ask for 20K in escrow to be used for your to get permits afterwards. I can only use the 20K for permit related things. My inspector told me it looked to code so I went and bought anyhow. Took me a 40 hours or so of unpaid leg time but got the permits, paid for them out of escrow and released the funds. Lucky for me taxes based on purchase price not improvements so I did not get charged extra.
Taxes in Wake County (not sure about other counties) are based on assessments where square footage DOES matter. Taxes here aren't based on selling prices.
Where are you located?
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When my Mom bought her new house in Apex back in ~2001, the upstairs bonus room was only roughed in. No insulation or drywall.
We did the work on our own and just paid people on the side to do the drywall and carpet. I did the insulation myself.
When it came time to sell it, we listed the Bonus Room as additional SF on the MLS listing. The bonus room was quite large and made a difference in the price. But the wake county tax records still showed ~1250 and not the ~1475 it had now.
The buyer was ok with it and it never became an issue. We explaned what we did and the work was high quality.
I was unaware of needing a permit to do insulation and drywall to count the SF.
Permitting the basement really has very little to do with how it LOOKS.
The question is...who did the electrical? Did the owner or a licensed electrician? Who put in the insulation? Is it the correct amount? Is there insulation there? Is the hvac an addition? If so, who did it? Is the size correct? Or, did the person just add it on to the current hvac?
Vicki
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