Inspections and Dealing with Unwarranted basement unit?

Question

Hello All.

I own a home in San Francisco and  in process of remodeling of kitchen and siding work with permit. I did  get permit to remodel the kitchen and permit to the replace siding and also  got  plumbing and electrical permit which also required for the kitchen. During the inspections the inspector wanted to inspect the basement of the home where the unwarranted space existed and  where plumbing work that might have been done without permits, this is done before us buying the home.

For now, we did not allow the inspector to inspect the basement but we it will be required.

What will be the best route to take – should be get a permit to legalize the basement space or show it, as is. We are not planning to rent the space basically use it as  additional storage space. Any advice will be helpful .

Thank you.

Amit M. · Answer

@Matt Zing *WARNING* You really need to understand the implications here!

The city is now making homeowners with illegal in-laws (or perceived illegal in-laws) to legalize them, and bring them to code. Even if you do not want a second unit! Before you would have the choice of either legalizing the unit, or removing it. Now because of the “housing crisis”, they will *not* let you remove it! It’s really f*cked up.

What exactly is down there now? Rooms and a bathroom are ok. But is there ANY kitchen? It’s the kitchen that can make the inspector “determine” that’s it’s actually an illegal Inlaw.

My recommendation: if you do not want to legalize the second unit (which may be expensive to do, as well as make your home an official 2 unit bldg subject to rent control), I’d GET RID of the kitchen down there right away! Bring someone in on a weekend (so no inspector could drive by and see work going on there). Take out *all* the cabinets, appliances, especially stove and sink. I’d remove the plumbing coming out of the walls (you can leave the pipes hidden inside the walls) and patch and paint the sheetrock.  make sure it just looks like a room of open space.

Also, do you have interior stairs from the main home going downstairs? That helps a lot in avoiding the illegal inlaw definition.

Basically as long as he believes that it’s just extra rooms downstairs, I think all he will want to see is how your upstairs plumbing runs through the basement, which is normal.

I’d also work out a simple “excuse” of why he couldn’t go downstairs last time, if he seems suspicious or brings that up. Something like, my wife/daughter/etc. had some personal items stored there, but now it’s fine to go down.

Welcome to SF’s nutty housing inspection system! Good luck, and post here again how things went!

Frank Chin · Answer

You bought the home that way, so you should be in the clear. If you deny city inspector access for total inspection, they would most likely not sign off on the rehab work which you applied for a permit for. I had rehabs done in NY, applied for permits. I had an unlicensed plumber put gas pipes in for a new laundry room, hire him to do the walls, says a friend can do the pipes cheaper, and I went ahead with that. Very stupid. Later on, when I had to get the improvement legalized, got permits retroactively, in the subsequent inspection, found the gas pipes were of the wrong size. Since the pipes ran through a tenant apartment to the second floor, I had to rip the walls out, in 2 separate apartments and do it over again.

An experienced electrician who I used told me sometimes you have to be careful and separate out the scope of the job for permits, so they would inspect one place, instead of roaming through you house finding other things wrong. But they could find things wrong and dangerous. My dad rehabbed a commercial property, hired a plumber to redo the plumbing in his basement. The job was completed, turned out to be incompetent, and the job failed 2 inspections, and finally signed off on the third. The plumber cut corners. The funny part of the story is he had to install an air vent to the outside to bring the sewer pipes up to code. A few years after the job was signed off, the vent protruding on the sidewalk out front fell over and discovered it wasn't hooked to anything. They just dug a hole outside, stick the vent in for show. Guess the inspectors missed that with all the other problems. My dad was mad, saying "can't believe the inspector missed that".

Your best bet is to get everything inspected, if issues are found, fix it now, blame it on the prior owner, and let it be. It is what it is. Better be safe, than cheap and sorry.

Laryssa Stecyk · Answer

Is the basement legal height? I don't know about SF but in Oakland they can and do make you tear out everything that was not previously permitted if you are under legal height which is now 7'. This is regardless of whether you purchased it that way or not. If you have legal height it should be very straightforward to permit the existing space as-is, especially since you don't have a kitchen.

Mark Hogan · Answer

Hi Matt, one thing to consider is that it will add significantly to your property value. That square footage is not currently reflected on the assessor records, which is what goes on a real estate listing (and subsequently is how much people evaluate the selling price). If you have enough headroom (7'6") legalizing might not be that expensive, depending on what the other existing conditions are. If you have to excavate to get the headroom it will SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive.

Johnson H. · Answer

Matt, welcome to BiggerPockets. You asked what is the worse that can happen and it would be that the inspector tells you to remove everything done without permits. The main thing is that there isn't a kitchen which is positive as they would most likely ask you to remove the stove at the minimum. In addition, it does not sound like you want to legalize an in-law space, it is just space on the first floor that was converted from basement/garage space to living space without permit a long time ago, very common situation in SF.

If I were you, I would call up a couple of contractors that do business in SF and ask what they would do if they ran into this. Either Yelp or looking through GC's permits on Buildzoom would be a great starting point. Also, with so much construction in the city, you could just walk up into a house being remodeled and see if the GC is there that you can talk to. They would know the pulse of what inspectors are looking for these days.

Matt Zing · Answer

Thank you for replies.

We did not want to open can of worms downstairs. There is no kitchen downstairs but a bathroom and 2 rooms (no doors) and there are stairs leading downstairs. There was work that was done on plumbing and framing downstairs  without permit by previous owners. And  is shower ok in the downstairs bathroom. What is the worse that can happen?  Should i apply to make the rooms and bathroom  legal before the next inspection or leave it as-is and continue with the plumbing inspection. We are not planing to rent the unit or use as bedrooms, just extra space for exercise and storage. We are also replacing siding and windows with permit (we got ok to put the siding on after rough inspection which are are going so now.)

Matt

Amit M. · Answer

@Matt Zing as described, I’d just leave as is. Unless there are obvious safety issues, etc. good chance he will say nothing about that bathroom. Next, he may ask to remove the shower, then see if simply capping the plumbing is enough. After that, he may ask to legalize or remove the bathroom, but I think that’s less likely. Also make it look like storage, so no beds, etc. to make it look like a sleeping area. The key is not to make it look like a full unit (kitchen) cause that’s when a royal clusterf*ck will happen. As you describe it, you should be good. Let us know what happens here.

Matt Zing · Answer

Also, should i be concerned about unwarranted bathroom downstairs?

Inspections and Dealing with Unwarranted basement unit?

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