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Updated about 6 years ago, 11/26/2018
Starting Out and Question on Work Without a Permit
Hello Bigger Pockets community,
My name is Nick, I am from Rhode Island, and I am trying to get my foot in the door of the rental property business. I have been browsing the forums for a while now but just got around to making an account, although my partner has posted a couple of times. I look forward to continuing to gain knowledge through this forum and hopefully giving some back.
I have started searching for properties and putting in offers through a Real Estate agent I trust. I currently have an offer in on property in West Warwick, RI. It is a side-by-side duplex with two large units. We will call them units 1 and 2. Both units originally have 2 beds one bathroom, and they are large. In addition, unit 2 has some basement space converted into an additional bedroom and bathroom and also an additional kitchen. So unit two is listed by the selling agent as a 3 bedroom 2 bath "potential in-law". The numbers with a 2 bed 1 bath and a 3 bed 2 bath work out pretty well at what the offer is. The seller has not accepted the offer yet because they are leaving it on for a week and have an open house. This has given time to do some extra digging and I just learned from my realtor today that the extra bed, bath, and kitchen in unit 2 never had construction permits pulled for adding them to the living space.
I have read some info on un-permitted units as a whole (as in a actual 3 unit with a whole 4th unit un-permitted or un-zoned). This seems a little different because in this case the unit is still zoned properly as a two unit but the additional bed and bath are not there as far as the town in concerned. Does anyone have any thoughts or advice on if this would be a problem for renting it as a 3 bed 2 bath unit? Thank you for any help and nice to meet you all.