When we started renovation of the basement we struggled over whether or not to get a building permit from our county. Why spend the money? Would it be a signal for the county to increase our property taxes? What would happen if we didn’t get the permit and we wanted to sell the house? Are there implications with homeowners insurance?
We got all sorts of conflicting advice. Some neighbor’s got the permit, others did not. In the end, we decided to get a permit. This was our reasoning:
- the additional cost of the permit was small relative to the overall project cost, about 2%. In our county, the permit is based on the square footage and we have a relatively large basement (about 2000 square feet).
- the permit and the county inspections would make it a legal renovation. There would be no implications when we went to sell the property and there would be no implications with the homeowners insurance. You should check with your insurance agent to determine what is or is not covered in a basement renovation. My understanding is that some below grade finishing can be excluded from things like water damage. Your agent will also be able to adjust your insurance limits if needed.
- there is some leverage with contractors. We made it clear that we were permitting the project and that inspections would be required. Full payment would only be made after inspection passed. We only used a few sub-contractors, but this turned out to be a great tool for vetting them. There were a handful of subs who tried to talk us out of the permit. I could only assume they were not going to do the work to code or they had something else to hide. I passed on all of them.
- technically in our county if an unpermitted project is discovered, they can make you remove the project or enough of it to prove it has been done to code. There would be no cost saving if I had to rip out drywall to prove electrical and plumbing were done correctly.
I was very intimidated by the inspection process at first, but it turned out not to be a big deal. The inspectors were all very helpful and we got some great advice for free. We found that our inspectors were very receptive about answering questions about how to do things correctly.
All of our inspections passed with no re-inspections. We didn’t think too much of this until we went to get the certificate of occupancy and the clerk told us it was pretty unusual, so it turned out to be something we were proud of!
Posted by jpmorrissey 