To retroactively permit or not? That is the question.

[David Fritch]

Wrestling with a question here and I thought I'd throw it out to the forum.

Bought a bank owned house that is 1084 sq ft 2 BR 1.75 bath on paper. The actual house is 1396 sq ft 3 BR. The additional sq footage was added by turning a porch into a dining room and an addition, an average sized bedroom. There is no permit on file for the work but it's good work and vital to the house.

Cost to go through the permitting and engineering range from 4-6k depending on who you talk to at the county and the engineering firm. That is not taking corrections into account.

We had the idea to put a small closet in a different small 4th room (80 sf) and call it a bedroom. It's on the county's plan and has an egress window -so all requirements to be called a bedroom are met.

So we can market the house as a 3BR 1.75 BA which is where we want to be anyway. The house is great and will sell itself if we can get enough people through the door.

So this is my current leaning at the time... to skip the county and the engineering firm, rehab it, list and move on.

I'd love to hear thoughts and insights. Anyone else ever run across this issue?