Hi,
This is a very long story but I am going to try to make it short and sweet if that is even possible. My partner and I purchased our first fix and flip in Tamarac Florida in April of this year. The realtor that we used is a long time friend who is also an investor and has been in real estate for over 20 years. He agreed to work with us and basically show us the ropes, for half the profit of course. So we agreed to take him on as a partner. He had all of the contractors in place and we didn't need to worry about finding anyone to do the work. His best friend is a general contractor and he had him do the roof work that needed to be done. Little did we know that he was proceeding without getting a permit to do the work. One of the neighbors called the city to report us and now we have a few violations and two of them are not valid. The inspector stated that the overhang in the front was put there by us and the kitchen has work done without a permit. None of this is true. The overhang was there already, the roofers just fixed some spots that needed fixing and there was a hole in the roof that needed to be fixed. As far as the kitchen is concerned, we have done absolutely nothing in the kitchen to this day. We received the violation in June and was told that we had 30 days to fix the problem or we had a court date on Oct. 6th. The realtor told us don't worry, I know someone in the permit department who is a manager and I am going to take care of this. Well for 4 months now he keeps telling us that he is going to take care of it and nothing is done yet. He told us that he went down to the office to speak with the manager on two occasions, one which he happened to not be there and the other, the manager was on vacation. My partner and I have been more than patient at this point and are really starting to get worried that the realtor is not going to fix the problem in time. I started calling some Licensed General Contractors in the area to get some information on how we should proceed so I have more knowledge and not just rely on what the realtor is telling us. We also spoke with the Inspector himself and at the looks of it, he really wants to stick it to us. The General Contractors told me that the realtor can not possibly do anything for us even if he know someone in the office because at the end of the day we still need a licensed general contractor, electrical contractor, architect and such to take care of the violations for you. They said that no matter what we still had to deal with the inspector and he was not going away. My question is this: Can the realtor possibly do anything for us if he knows someone in the permit department? Or are the general contractors telling me the truth. One of them said that they have no idea how he possibly can help us because the permit department is many departments. So even if he know one manager in one department he still has to deal with the other departments violations. I just dont know who to trust at this point. I don't know if the contractors were giving me this info because they want my business and don't want to let me know that YES, there could be a loop hole that your realtor friend can go through to fix this for you. My second question is this: Since we are approaching the court date, I know that we can get an extension, but can we do this ourselves, or do we need a licensed contractor at this point to do the extension? I was told by the contractor that we cannot do this ourselves at this point. That the violations department needs to see that we have the proper licensed people in place to do the work before we can get the extension. Thank you in advance for any advice.
Sherry
