Apt Above Garage has "Storage only" permits, How to make Liveable

[Allan Smith]

Has anyone dealt with this before? I'm looking at purchasing a house with a separate building that has garage and 1000 sf apt on top. The permits pulled say it is "storage only" but there's a bathroom and kitchen. It's R10 (In Nashville that means two units is allowed as long as lot is 10,000 SF which it is) so a second unit should be fine, but if I have codes come out to make the apt officially legally livable, what would happen? Would they be able to simply update after seeing it, or require me to tear out drywall, redo stuff, etc? This would allow me to sell the property with apt as official living square footage.

[Luka Milicevic]

@Allan Smith

Not really a question that we can answer. Only zoning can answer this for you.

My guess is if it has a permit for storage only and also has a kitchen and bathroom then the current/previous owner didn't pull the proper permit for the work.

If I was a betting man, which I'm not, I would say that they are goign to require you to pull a proper permit and bring it up to code. I'm assuming it's not up to code....

My other assumption is that if it has a kitchen up there, the fire marshal might have a field day. 

Again, this is all guessing and speculation but I don't think anyone can give you a proper answer other than the wonderful folks down at codes.