Unpermitted addition in Phoenix

[Yader Gomez]

Hello all,

I just went under contract for a great property with two homes on the lot and I plan to owner-occupy for several years. The zoning is in order, separate meters, good neighborhood. But it turns out that the master bed and bath for the main house (where I'll be living) is an unpermitted addition. This helped me get the property at the price I did. 

However, I'm concerned what this means for me going forward. Everything I've read after looking through tons of previous threads suggests that it's not much of a problem if disclosed (which the seller did), not counted in the sq ft of the property when considering the sale price (which they also did correctly), and is also less of a hassle if the property is intended for buy and hold as opposed to a flip (which I plan to buy and hold). 

My main concern is for the distant future when I intend to rent this front house out as well. The master has windows but they're high up and small. So in order for me to get a permit for an egress window, the addition itself needs to be permitted I'm assuming. I'm no professional but at least to my untrained eye the construction looked solid. What are the steps for me to get this permitted? What can I expect the costs to be for best case scenario of hiring an engineer and getting the city to grant a permit? I assume the costs are a nightmare in the worst case scenarios of a either a major rebuild or full teardown of the addition. Any help is appreciated! 

[Wes Blackwell]

@Yader Gomez

There are several ways to approach this:

1. Don't get it permitted. And when you put a bigger window in it, don't get a permit for that either. I won't tell if you won't ;-)
2. Ask the seller to get it permitted while you're still in contract. Although, that may change the price you end up buying it for...
3. Get it permitted yourself after escrow (but get it inspected during escrow so you know what to expect, and whether or not it's a deal breaker)

My best advice is to get a contractor who knows his stuff to take a look at it and tell you if it was built to code. If you're going to avoid getting permits, always make sure you build to code so if you get caught you don't have to do any remodeling.

If it's not built to code, it really depends on what was done incorrectly and how much it's going to cost to fix. For example, if the framing was subpar, you could end up rebuilding the entire room! (No bueno!)

Better to know now while you still have an inspection contingency and can back out than to be unpleasantly surprised later.

Otherwise, you're kind of opening a can of worms by doing it after closing and inviting a building inspector to come stick his nose in everything. Depending on how much of a stickler they are that could be a real problem. 

Get a contractor to look at it, and then make your decision because you'll be way more informed of what each option is going to cost you. I'm sure he'll even give you a bid.

It's not going to be too costly if everything is up to current standards, but if it's not... it could be REAAAAL bad and you won't know until you have a professional look at it. Anything else we'd say here is just a wild guess.