House addition that was most likely never permitted

[Tristan S.]

Hi Guys,

Got a lead recently, and I wanted to have your opinion on certain things. On the tax appraisal district, the house is listed as a 820 ft2 2/1. The seller told me that an addition was done and that the house is now a 1400ft2 3/2. I am assuming that this work was never permitted or made official since it does not appear as such on the tax appraisal website. That explains why that person would not want to list the property using an agent.
I am going to try seeing the house to get an idea of the quality of that addition.

Is there any way to get the addition "approved" and make it official afterward or is it already too late and I should just run away?

Thanks for your help!

[Mindy Jensen]

@Tristan S. , I live in a home where a huge addition was unpermitted. Of course, I found this out after I bought it, and could have been made to tear it down if it was located the next town over. They are sticklers for their rules.

My town is more forgiving, and I simply had to bring it up to code. As I was taking it down to the studs anyway, I thought this would be easy. I also had to prove the footers were in properly, which required me to dig some pretty deep holes to find the bottom of them. Of course by hand, because of hinkyness in the plumbing...

I also had to bring them up to current building codes, not codes at the time the addition was put on.