Why does my Kauai House not have a Certificate of Occupancy?

Why does my Kauai House not have a Certificate of Occupancy?

  This Kauai house for sale has its CO.

An agent in my office had a transaction where an agent from another company was representing the buyer of the home. My agent came to me and said the buyer is complaining that the house does not have a “Certificate of Occupancy”  “what do I do?” questioned my agent.  I asked my agent “When was the house built” “1985” was the response and the problem was solved. The County of Kauai did not issue a Certificate of Occupancy on residential homes prior to December of 2001.

A certificate of occupancy or CO is issued by the building department upon a structure’s final inspections by the county’s building inspectors. The inspections are to see if the builder met current building codes and safety standards. The CO must be issued prior to occupancy.

Prior to 2001 Kauai residential homes were required to have multiple inspections including the final inspections of the building, electrical & plumbing improvements. So how do you tell if your current home or the home you’re planning to buy has all its final building permits or CO? Pre web/internet days this was done by faxing a form to the building division, where then the county employee would have to manually look in the files for the inspection cards. This put a burden on the county personnel and tended to be an error prone system. Luckily most owners & contractors kept copies of their final building permits.

 The county now has all this information online.  The public may look up their or anybody else’s building permit and CO status at : http://www.kauai.gov/BuildingPermits.  Building permit numbers can also be found on line on the County’s web site at www.kauai.gov. A few minutes of research can save you from unknowingly buying a property with unpermitted and possibly unsafe structures.

 If you have more questions Julie Black Realtor/Broker Kauai Dreams Realty can be reached at 822-7774 or julie@hisemail.net.

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By: Julie Black