I don't know if residential laws are similar across most states, but here, you basically need a permit if anyone uses a tool on your property. When we put a 300 foot addition and deck on our old house back in 2005, we had to pay for multiple permits. The city claims it is for your safety, but after watching these 'inspectors,' I can promise you that it's just a way for the city to collect money and pay some old geezer to drive around in a city vehicle all day. I watched as the same guy each time would sit in his car for 20 minutes in front of my house. Then mosey over to the item to be inspected, write on a clipboard, slap a sticker on it, then return to his car to sit there for another 20 minutes. Seriously. There was ZERO inspecting going on.
Another time, we had a new furnace installed. I didn't remember paying for a permit, but I'm sure my HVAC guy just included it in the price. A YEAR LATER, there was a knock on my door from Mr. Inspector, telling me he had to inspect my new furnace. I commented to him that it wasn't a new furnace, as we'd had it for a year. He said they were, "backed up a bit." Hmmm.... well, if my HVAC guy had done a piss poor job of installing the furnace, I'd probably be dead by now, but THANKS, Mr. Inspector!
Yet another time, we had to call the city about some water/pipe issues (sinking) out by the sidewalk. After numerous calls, we finally got someone to come out. I watched the guy out the front window as he stood there, wrote on his clipboard, and then put an orange cone on the depression in the yard. He came up to the house and asked to use my phone (before the days of cell phones). When he put down his clipboard, I glanced at it. The 'work' order said, "Just put a cone on it and tell the homeowner to contact the county." Since then, my husband and I have used the line, "Just put a cone on it!" as a running joke every time something breaks. Also, how dumb do you have to be to allow a homeowner to read something like that?????
So, back to my daughter . . . the short story is that they have a MAJOR sewer pipe issue from their house out to the street that is going to cost about $15,000 to fix. The house is not even that old (built in the early 90's). The conclusion of both plumbers that have used long cameras to determine how to fix it? Shoddy workmanship/errors of the original contractors who installed the whole thing. Once again, THANKS city inspectors for doing your job!!
You would think that your daughter would have better options with her sewer line showing shoddy workmanship in the first place. She may come out cheaper to abandon the idea of repairing that particular line, and have a plumber install a new one instead, that's what we did at our last house.
ReplyDeleteYes, my husband is trying to do research to see what their best option is. They are overwhelmed right now with new baby, going back to work, and school right now. I feel bad for them.
DeleteIt is a good idea to have a respected contractor who does build to code. They usually know the inspectors, and the inspectors know they know code. Doing a job to code is important, trusting inspectors to do a proper inspection is a crap shoot.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about inspecting a furnace one year late.
I totally agree that it's vital to have a contractor who knows what he's doing, doesn't cut corners, etc. It would just be nice if city employees would do the same.
DeleteThis is the part of home ownership that scares me. I mean, mostly Tara and I are excited to have our own place - it's the whole reason we're moving 1,200 miles away - but there IS a certain benefit to just submitting a maintenance request should something go wrong in our apartment.
ReplyDeleteMy best advice is to buy a house that has had the major things done recently (roof, siding, Windows, driveway, furnace, AC) and ignore cosmetics. As my realtor said, "That's just lipstick on a pig." It's easy to get sucked in by stainless steel appliances and granite counters, but you really need to worry about the bones of the house.
DeleteOh damn that really sucks. We do have to get a permit here in order to build anything like an add on, fence ect here in this state too. My brother and ex sister in law found that out when my brother build a fence in their back yard to use as the dog run and then a few years later they tried to sell the house. The small play house he build, the fence and the work done on the garage door all had to be taken down and a permit had to be bought and a licensed contractor had to come out and fix the garage door before they could even put their house up for sale.
ReplyDeleteI have seen situations like that on those house flipping shows on HGTV. It's crazy when you think about it. It's a freaking fence!
Deletehaha oh I've seen plenty of those lazy arse inspectors here. They look and walk away. No inspecting what so ever. Nice of him to think of you a year later though. Yuck to $15,000. We had an electrician in because a plug wouldn't work, turns out the thing was set up wrong and was a fire trap. Gotta love inspectors.
ReplyDeleteIt's a miracle we are all alive with the number of lazy ass inspectors!
DeleteThis is one of the MAIN reasons why I have rented all my life and will most likely continue to rent. I am VERY lazy when it comes to fixing things that break (I was the same when I owned a car), and I also hate the fact that when you own a home, you are responsible for paying for any repairs or replacements. Granted, renting has it's share of frustrations as well because you have to rely on the maintenance department to fix things whenever they feel like it. And also, my rent increases each year, so in a way, I DO pay for the repairs with my yearly rent increases. However, I still prefer renting.
ReplyDelete" I watched as the same guy each time would sit in his car for 20 minutes in front of my house. Then mosey over to the item to be inspected, write on a clipboard, slap a sticker on it, then return to his car to sit there for another 20 minutes. Seriously. There was ZERO inspecting going on."
HA! OMG...I witnessed something very similar here this past summer with city workers. I watched FIVE workmen over a period of TWO weeks paint a park fence, which was no longer than 12 feet long. I watch each day as they would work for 5-10 mins on the fence, stop, walk to a park bench and sit down for 15-20 mins. Then get up work for another 5-10 mins on the fence, stop, walk to a park bench and sit down for another 15-20 mins. And the whole time, they were talking on their cell phones.
Talk about LAZY!!!!
Have a FAB week, my friend!
X
You are wise to just keep renting. It's not worth the cost of upkeep, especially with things like landscaping and snow removal, plus the insurance!
DeleteI had to laugh at the fence painters. I mostly notice the road workers here. It usually is one guy working and two guys standing there watching. I never understand how the one guy who's actually working doesn't get pissed!
Hubby's parents had some remodeling done to the homes they owned. The contractor found the cheapest way to do it and I'm not sure he got the inspections needed. Thankfully the house hubby inherited did okay with the inspection when it came time to sell, only because the person he hired to redo some things knew about code and fixed things inspectors would be looking for, but hubby's brother fears when he is ready to sell his house because he knows there are things not up to code.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nightmare for your daughter and SIL. Is there any way their house insurance would cover any of this (if its Geico, more than likely it won't, they don't cover anything if they can help it). I feel for them!
betty
Glad you were still able to sell! It doesn't look like their homeowners is going to cover anything. It wouldn't even pay for the clean up from the sewer backup into the basement because they didn't have a specific rider (or whatever it's called) where you pay extra to cover that.
DeleteI think building inspectors here are pretty useless as well, but yours sound ten times worse - talk about job creation! The standard of new houses here has had a lot of criticism recently, with well-known housebuilders getting stick for all sorts of major structural defects. I would always buy an older house that has stood the test of time.
ReplyDeleteWe also have only bought older (20+ years) homes. I have heard nightmare stories about new houses.
DeleteWhy, just the other day, I saw a gentleman I didn't know standing in my backyard, looking up at our roof. I asked him what he was doing, and he told us he was inspecting our roof. Which was odd, because our roof is at least 7 years old. He muttered something about they must not have pulled a permit, back in the day, and went about his business. Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the front door, apologizing. "Your house is xx27; I was supposed to inspect xx37. Sorry for the trouble."
ReplyDeleteWhen we sold our previous house, the guy who inspected the house on the bank's behalf told us we had to make three repairs before he would approve it, and all three were nonsense. He wanted us to re-seal the back roof, even though I had just sealed it the summer before; he wanted us to put a railing on the basement stairs, which seems reasonable enough, but the way he wanted us to do it would basically render the basement inaccessible, and he wanted us to remove a door opening onto the back roof. So I consulted with our buyers, and made the repairs such that they would pass the 'inspection', but the new owners could easily undo them in 10 minutes. And God gave us a 75-degree day in early March, so I could seal the roof. . .
Lol, I thought for sure your inspector was 7 years late!
DeleteThat's great that you were able to contact your buyers and make the repairs that they could undo. The only thing we had to do when we sold was upgrade some of the electrical outlets.
Bijoux, I'm so sorry about your daughter's homeowner woes.
ReplyDeleteThat truly sucks and the fact that it was due to incompetent inspectors makes it suck even harder.
Those inspectors sound like real parasites, taking tax dollars and doing squat in return.
But I must admit that I laughed at that "Just put on cone on it" line!
Life is full of orange cone moments! Thanks, Rob!
DeleteOMG - I hate this for you and your daughter! Your tax dollars at work...shaking my head.
ReplyDeleteThe inspectors here must be better. I believe our house is built really well (we had a reputable, good builder), yet I see that during the building process, there were two failed inspections (they were approved during a later visit).
The big problem here in Florida is that oftentimes major work is done without a permit, usually by a homeowner or a handyman who doesn't really know how to properly replace or repair a roof or build an addition...and a few years later, the structural engineers at work are doing an investigation because someone files an insurance claim.
I have heard of homeowners trying to get away with working without permits and then it backfires when they sell their homes. I didn't think about the insurance repercussions.
DeleteFortunately things here are a pain, but not quite as big a pain. As long as there are not obvious signs of something major going on, they mostly leave you alone. How that happens in a Liberal state I have no idea, but I ain't gonna argue since they nit-pick everything else two times over.
ReplyDeleteYou can't manage an addition or siding without a permit, but oddly enough we did a roof and they said "don't worry about it unless you're replacing rafters.".
We were thankful for them when we were doing flood relief, there were oodles of scam artists who got caught doing shoddy work. So there's that .....
They did want to issue a permit for my new shed, even though it's small enough not to require it, "for my own good" but I declined. ;-)
LOL, that was nice of them to offer their assistance in inspecting your shed. Make sure you install it up to code!!!
DeleteThe idea of suddenly being out $15,000 because of a pipe is exactly why I am in no rush whatsoever to buy a home. It just seems like a huge money pit. As to the government incompetence, it's occasionally mind blowing. I'm still dealing with a tax-return problem from nearly a year ago because a single digit of my Social Security number was off on my W2. And that was just too much for the federal government to handle.
ReplyDeleteOh man, good luck with that! And Happy Thanksgiving!
DeleteHere, the issue is wanting to change something outside of your home (they seem to care less on inside) and having to go before the architectural review committee. And if you want to cut a tree that is larger than 22 inches round, I think you have to get an act of congress. After the hurricane last year, they waved that rule and many of us used that time to get trees removed without the hassle.
ReplyDeleteBusinesses here are subjected to the architectural review as they must abide by the Western Reserve look. Wow on the trees! I can understand if it's a rare tree type or over a certain age, but still, private property should mean something!
DeleteWow. That is maddening. I can't imagine. It isn't like that around here. Yet. But it is getting there. Just one of the reasons my husband is always trying to get me to move out to the country. That is sounding better and better these days.
ReplyDeleteI need neighborhoods with sidewalks! 😀
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