Listing agents, it’s your responsibility to advise your seller client that any work that they had performed to their home needs to have a signed off permit on file. If the work was never permitted, you have an issue to address.
The buyer’s agent should be advising his/her buyer that work performed should have been permitted, and they need to ask for verification of this task. If the work was not permitted, it needs to be addressed.
This is a common happening today because homeowners do not want to increase their annual real estate taxes. Improvements can easily make that happen, so rather than do the work correctly starting with a professional pulling a permit the homeowner will find someone who is willing to do the work illegally.
Aside from the fact that the licensee could lose his license, the work may not be to today’s code. There may be some degree of danger within that improvement; there may be a lawsuit lurking in the future; and there may be unnecessary physical and financial harm as a result.
This is an important task that many real estate agents do not think about; this is an important part of representing your client properly; and this applies to buyer’s agents and listing agents. Pulling a permit is the law whenever home improvements are performed. There are very few improvements that do not require permitting.
Comments(40)