Rehabber · Syracuse, NY · Member since 2012 · 29 posts · 7 votes
Went to the building dept in my town today, I have some electrical work that needs to be completed in order to get a clean certificate of occupancy, anyway they said that i needed a licensed electrician to do all of the repairs. This is my eighth flip in the same town, has never been a problem, have always done the work myself and pulled the proper permits. They had me sign an oath stating that I am the owner and will be occupying the property and am responsible for the work. I am planning on getting the C/O in my name as soon as the list of repairs has been completed. Im going to move into this flip until I sell it. Do you think there will be problems when its time to sell (probably six months to get it under contract and sold)?
Yea. Some inspectors go so far overboard, its ridiculous.
The one in Lansing really turned me off to that town entirely - even though the prices are pretty good as are the rents. Its just not worth the hassle though.
I'll say this much, though. I do believe in pulling permits every time I get a house. Even if its only carpet and paint, I'll call the village and check that I don't need one just so they see that I'm reaching out and not trying to pull a fast one.
I've found that villages and inspectors tend to be a lot friendlier if you're at least putting in for the permits. I also think its well worth the $100 or $200 for the permits because then I get someone else looking at the work.
You'd be surprised how many little things the contractors will miss that might actually have some importance.
The other issue in pulling permits is that, if there are any problems with the house later on, I can show I had a licensed contractor do the work and had it inspected by the village as well. I've made a "reasonable" effort to ensure the house was safe.
I'm not sure people who do the work themselves could say that if they're not licensed and if no inspection was done. I know they can try to claim that the work was done before they bought the house. But I don't think insurance adjusters or attorneys are that dumb. They can easily tell how old some of the wiring, hvac, plumbing stuff is and can do the math from there.
@Stephen S. I wrote a long thread about this when it happened. Don't mess with building inspectors. You can read more about the saga there. Long story short. The rehabber pulled permits for some, but not all work. When doing inspections, the inspectors noticed other work and demanded additional inspections. In the end, he would have been caught, anyway, because that city, and other here, too, have a program to look at new MLS listings. If they see work, they check the permit history. In our case, there were no permits from when it was built in the 40's until recently. Yet, you could clearly see in the basement where the floor had been trenched to install drains. Even though this work wasn't done by the rehabber, the city had the right to request floors and walls be opened to check it out.
If I was doing the fix and flip I would be pulling permits and dealing with the bureaucracy but with Buy and Hold it's just a waste of time when it comes to plumbing and electrical I get it done by licensed guys that i know and i make sure to tell them to do it up to code in case someday inspectors come around.
As the other poster mentioned the Pros hate pulling permits in towns that are well known to give a hard time to get inspectors to pass on work.
Your experiences may vary obviously with location.
In some jurisdictions here if work is done without permits {and it is detected} a notation is placed on the title and it will not be possible to transfer the title until the situation is rectified.
Our last permit issue was with the roof guy who per contract was supposed to pull a permit. It is a big roof, he was there 2 weeks and we have electrical work being done at the same time. I go down and see a stop work order posted. We call the town about the electrical inspection and the engineering department says the roof guy didn't pull a permit. What was the roofing contractor thinking! Electrical guys and coming and going... Now I know it is just an extra tax but sometimes you just have to do it.. So when the lead inspector comes I tell the roofer to get lost just in case the lead guy wants to get into it about lead certs and separate permits for painting the fascia and soffits. The permit process is just too strange sometimes.