One time I bought a house and when I went to get the power turned on the power company required me to pull a permit just to turn on the power because power had been disconnected from the house for so long.

Not sure if you got an STR permit already, but rentals have been busy lately with local demand.

One of the other tenants also put an illegal pool in the back yard without required permits or fencing. 

Mine were pretty cut and dry - all vacant, did searches on taxes, liens, assessments, title, deed holders, permits, sellers, etc.

As far as topics go, I'd be most interested in hearing hyper-specific Austin topics, such as how to navigate the local permitting process, what are the newest and most impactful projects going up right now, how is current and pending local legislation affecting our business, etc.

I don’t know what I’m looking at for permit costs, converting costs, moving heating unit pricing, etc etc! 

I have a tenant that moved into a small residential property of mine and even though we had rehabbed it, apparently we screwed up and didn’t get the proper permits pulled (honest mistake, whoops).Subsequently, the city determined the home shouldn’t have been occupied until we went through the permitting process again and therefore we asked the tenant to leave the premises indefinitely.After they left, we got a letter from an attorney the tenant retained demanding around $30k for pain and suffering, legal fees, moving costs, etc.I took the advice of my attorney and we went to court over it, as they literally wouldn’t settle, and at the time,it seemed like $30k for a house for a $800 a month house was highway robbery at best.This all started in 2017 believe it or not, and we are still no closer to having an actual day in court.

Because there may be different laws for how you are represented, you may live where they do title transfers, you may live where there are inspections, permits, housing authorities, financing rules, I may not be able to help you but if you tell this forum what state and city you are looking at there may be someone familiar with your local process.

Legally you would need a permit to make those changes.

One red flag to me was that he didn't really want to pull permits for the work.