Legacy Addition: Unpermitted Structure, Is now a good time to resolve?

[Benson Davis]

I own a rental property that has an unpermitted family room that was added before I purchased it in 1995. Our current tenant is moving in August. We are planning to upgrade the kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom. If I call for an inspection on the new upgrades, I am concerned the inspector will see the unpermitted structure and require us to it tear down or upgrade it. Should I try to fix permit the structure?  What is the likelihood an inspector would notice it? I am also concerned about overdue property taxes, as the addition was not documented by the county.

Thoughts?

    

[Denette R.]

I'm a General contractor and it's best to get it permitted while you are doing the renovations because the city will check prior to plans being drawn up or permits issued, you'll probably have to open up the walls and let them see it was built to code, if not they will not issue you permits for the new work or work place a red tag to demo it completely. Hopefully whoever built it abided by the setbacks and built it to code. They'll check the foundation, footings, stud placement, fire blocking etc. but you won't have to remove everything if your straight forward with them, they'll only have you expose the parts they need to see.