Just to update the two people following my blog, I'm not going to be the lovely neighbor of a sex offender, well, at least not this time - that house went to someone else. Secondly, I went to check out a house this weekend. Huge yard, relatively clean, nice bathrooms, three rooms, good sized kitchen. The carpet needed to be fixed, fence replaced and it was next to an empty lot, but these were all workable things. Just when I was getting my hopes up my agent unlocks the garage.
I literally moaned. It was another unpermited garage conversion. This has been the bane of my home buying existence, right up there with investment buyers, and banks hating FHA. Frustrated I started to do some research on unpermited garage conversion and FHA. Turns out it is mostly up to the inspector. FHA says it isn't their job to enforce local ordinances. On the other hand, most unpermited work has flaws that an appraiser can say make the home uninhabitable. Sure, I might never use the poorly installed toilet in the garage, but it still was improperly installed. I'm sure that there are plenty of good reasons people didn't get permits. Avoiding higher property taxes, ambitious do-it your-selfers, homeowners who didn't want to deal with city bureaucrats are just a few reasons homeowners might have done a conversion without the proper paper work. No matter how good the reason for the unpermited addition it is still a head-ache that can be avoided.
Moral of the story? If you're going to do a conversion or an addition - get a permit.
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