Friends-locked cause you shouldn’t announce this shit it public.
Apparently our house has pretty significant code violations and it is very likely that we have almost no permits on anything. Oh, and the roof? Not professionally installed and almost certainly a code violation. *bang head against wall* Looks like there is a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed before we can do anything we just want to do. We have issues with our house that invalidate our home owners insurance even. Nice. We have issues with our house such that if we sold the house and did not itemize every single thing wrong with the house we could get sued years later.
FRACK!
good thing you found that out before it sold!
Maybe it would be cheaper to level it and build new? If you guys are now intending to stay I mean, make it all green all super and stuff. My dad’s house is ALMOST getting to that point.
It wouldn’t be cheaper to level it and build new.
so… can you sue the people you bought it from for non-disclosure?
I’m not sure. I have no idea what was itemized in the sale because I wasn’t involved. It’s pretty likely that we could but I don’t think we will do that. It’s a big fucking hassle and Noah has lived here for almost 8 years.
yeah, it would be a pain in the ass… I thought you were in a house that you and Noah got together so it was a recent-ish purchase. Eight years later it’s probably not worth it.
We could find out what was itemized in the sale easily enough (remember that huge lump of house paperwork?), and I’m sure it doesn’t cover everything you just listed. I don’t particularly want to sue them either, but I also have only this LJ post as far as knowing the scope of the problem.
Yeesh, what a mess. And nasty as suing is, selling someone a house that you *know* isn’t up to code is nastier.
It’s sort of a mixed bag on some of it. Some of the major code violations will be easy-ish to fix. Some of it… not so much. And given that the roof is one of the biggest it’s a bit fuzzy. We would probably need to replace a roof pretty soon anyway, so how much does it matter that the current roof isn’t up to code?
I guess that if us cleaning up after them is not too expensive then it doesn’t justify legal costs.
I kind of didn’t want to put every single thing in this post. 🙂 Yeah, we’ll be talking. *sigh*
*hugs*
I think your city is being stinky. (Speaking as someone whose city is Notorious for that.)
You’d think that during a financial downturn, they’d loosen up their rules a little to facilitate construction people getting back to work and all. But the functionaries in the Planning and Building department are professional nit-pickers and no-sayers in many citiies. Ick.
And sorry to hear it.
This information all came from an independent home inspector with no connection to the city. He told me very frankly about ways I could get around “getting caught” on some of these issues but then also explained the penalties if I do get caught.
The homeowners’ insurance is very questionable – they have the right to inspect the condition of the house when they insure and renew, and unless Noah knowingly failed to disclose anything they asked about, the burden is on them to notice that there are problems with the house which might make it uninsurable.
whoa. what a drag! Please keep us posted on your ongoing problemsolving for this… as a hopefully-soon-to-be-homeowner-again, it could be very helpful to me.
Houses are full of frustrating tidbits. Like we just discovered evidence of a SIGNIFICANT fire in the rabbit hole upstairs, directly over the sun room. Wood that looks like the remains of a campfire significant. Lemme tell you…extremely unsettling. Could we sue the previous owners for nondisclosure? Maybe, but what really matters is that we’re going to reinforce it and make it safe so we can honestly disclose the discovery if/when we sell.
I try to keep in mind that being done “to code” and “with permits” are two very different things. We didn’t get permits for any of the work on the new deck/roof extension, but it’s still being done with code/safety in mind. Both this house and the CA one had unpermitted stuff we knew about at purchase…it doesn’t stop sales, and is extremely common.
Try to just keep some perspective, get a second opinion if possible, and evaluate each issue as its own.
^hugs^