Can a town inspector mandate the deconstruction of an unpermitted room?

[Ethan McRae]

I'm currently doing a live-in flip. I purchased the house as is, and there is a room that branches off of the basement that most likely is unpermitted. Naturally, I would like to get this room permitted before selling. 

I'll need to have a town inspector come out to take a look at some point. However, I'm concerned that if the room violates town zoning laws, they could ask me to tear it down. This would be the WORST case scenario for me. 

My question is, how realistic is this scenario?

Secondly, I'm trying to think through next steps for tackling this project. Seems like it makes sense to have the town inspector take a look to give me an idea of what should be fixed up to get it up to code. Then I would have a GC do the same to give me a quote. Would this be a sensible order of operations or would it make more sense to do it the other way around so the GC could warn me if the town inspector may want the room removed? 

Thank you!

[Peter Mckernan]

I would go into the city, do not give them your address... Say this is something that I saw this place listed on like, or thinking of buying a place.. Then enter your situation, and see what they say. If it does violate city code they can for sure tell you to take it down or tear it down to the studs then put it back together in the right way per today's city codes.