March 30, 2008 Permits and Inspections, Let's Take a Look...

March 30, 2008
Lynnsy Logue, The Real Estate Lady and CondoCanDo in Charlotte, NC
Permits and inspections, let’s take a look…
Charlotte and change. The two go together. Huge building cranes populate the center city and the crane sentinels keep watch and work on a hospital site off Randolph Road, in the SouthPark cluster of office buildings, out Ballantyne Country Club way and up at the ever-expanding University of North Carolina-Charlotte.On a smaller scale, homes are being remodeled or torn down. Condos are coming out of conversion or under new construction…decks and patios, fences and driveways, room additions and garages with apartments above…new home sites tend to be smaller and one might wonder about surveys…and the importance of permitting for furnaces and decks, driveways and the like. And the follow-up of county inspections. Charlotte is a busy, growing city in every direction. Both old and new homes and offices are undergoing transformation.

Here’s an example: supposing you installed a new furnace and air conditioner two years ago. You thought the contractor was licensed. You assumed the unit was permitted and inspected. It was only when it was sold, inspected by a structural and mechanical inspector and then by a HVAC company that the buyer/seller discovered that the unit had never been permitted, never been inspected and the contractor was not licensed in North Carolina.Consequences: if a fire happened and the insurance company in their due diligence discovered this, your claim might be in jeopardy. If the information were divulged to FHA (assuming the loan were going FHA), the FHA appraiser would deduct the system from the appraisal. So the house would not appraise for the purchase price in most cases.

You can check property yourself in Mecklenburg County by going to www.meckpermit.com. Just simply enter the address and you will get a record of items permitted. Checking a contractor’s license in North Carolina, go to N.C. Board of Examiners and follow your nose. You can search by name and by county.Verifying has always been our job, even more so now in our energetic market.
Coming up: Condo Documents