Buying a property with unpermitted attic expansion

[Ranga Ramanathan]

Hello all thanks for reading I am looking at this 3 bedroom 1 bathroom single family residence in a solid C neighborhood it has a really good rental return little over 1% rule. The problem is public records say this is a 780 square foot 2 bed one bath but at some point they finished the attic to add a 400 square-foot livable space. The work looks very professional you can't say that it sticks out I don't plan to do any major Reno at this point that will require any kind of permit but I do have a plan to add a bathroom to the finished attic area sometime in future to add some value. Would you buy this property thanks for your suggestions. Sorry if this is a repeat post my previous post didn't appear for a while Ranga

[Will Gaston]

@Ranga Ramanathan I hear you on raising the red flags but it's far better to find out any and all info before you buy the property. Even if it means you can't/won't do the deal. 

I've been on the other end of it and bought property without finding out all of the details. Once the City came out to do an inspection on the permitted work that my contractor performed it caused me a lot problems. The property I bought had a guest house that had never been permitted and I spent about 10k trying to reverse their decision that it was no longer a livable space. If I would've found that out on the front end then it would've saved me a lot of headache.

It's been my experience that zoning/permitting departments are pretty unforgiving. Don't ask forgiveness, ask permission with them.