When selling a home, one of the questions on the Seller’s Disclosure Statement is whether the owner did work to the property that required a permit and if so, was the permit pulled?
Often homeowners do some kind of work on their property that requires a permit but for what ever reason the owner didn’t get a permit for the work. What has happened cannot be undone but it is important to disclose to the buyer of your home what work you did and what permits you did or did not get. Sometimes the buyer will request the seller to pull the permits and have the work approved and sometimes the buyer will simply do a more thorough inspection. I haven’t seen or heard of many situations where the buyer simply walks away once they find out that permits weren’t pulled.
When it comes to selling a home, disclose disclose disclose! Most often an admission of issues upfront are easily addressed during the offer negotiation process. What really ruins peoples’ days is when the issue is found during inspection or after closing and the buyer feels taken advantage of. These situations have a much higher chance of becoming big issues for all involved… what else has the seller failed to disclose? Would the offer have been lower had the buyer known about this prior? Would the buyer have walked away?
It seems like secrets about a house’s history have a tendency to show themselves eventually… when dealing with such things, honesty & thoroughness are always the best policy!
