Recently I was asked to do an inspection on a four year old townhouse that did not have a certificate of occupancy. The buyer wanted a property inspection done along with a cost estimate to complete the outstanding work. To further complicate the issue, the building was being lived in, which is illegal.
Unfortunately I had to decline. Here's why.
Let's first discuss the construction completion process. At the end of construction, the contractor calls the architect (or other responsible party for the design) to do a final inspection. If everything is in order, the architect issues the completion certificate along with a package of engineers' documents that have all the stamped drawings and calculations that confirm that the building has been built according to design, standards and codes. The architect also issues a "punch list" of deficiencies found that still need to be corrected, along with the estimated completion date agreed to by the contractor. The municipality is also notified to have their building inspector come and do their permit inspections.
In this case neither the architect nor the building inspector did their final inspections. Therefore the state of construction completion is unknown. As a property inspector I cannot put myself into a position where I am doing a "work-in-progress" construction inspection, as I have no knowledge of the state of construction. Neither can I estimate costs to complete as this is beyond an inspector's scope of work.
So here we have a contractor, architect, municipality and probably a bank and lawyers involved in the uncompleted project.
Finally, any new construction will have a new home warranty insurance policy taken out by the contractor, which will also have to be resolved.
It does not look like you need to practice too much---become a rainmaker and make your blogging count. 
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