# Expired permits cause complication



## mark handler

Expired permits cause complication

By Anthony Clark October 25, 2015

When Cindy Allen and her husband hired a contractor in June to put a screen enclosure on the back porch of their home near Haile Plantation, the county building department refused to issue the permit because of an expired permit from 2005 they did not know about when they bought the house in 2010.

A roofer had completed a partial shingle reroof without getting a final inspection from the county to close out the permit.

The couple was lucky. The roofer was still in business and took out a completion permit to get a final inspection and close it out, and they were able to get their porch screened in.

But other owners are having to hire contractors or engineers at their own expense, sometimes having to redo the work or do more to bring old construction up to current state building codes. Expired permits also are complicating home sales due to disclosure and permit search requirements added to the standard sales contracts adopted by Florida Realtors and the Florida Bar in 2010 in response to unsuspecting buyers faced with code violations following a frenzy of construction after several hurricanes.

Gainesville real estate lawyer Robert Lash said an expired permit “probably rears its wicked head” in 25 percent of the sales he handles.

The unincorporated county has 9,189 expired building permits out of 125,168 issued since 1985, when it started recording permits electronically, said Rick Wolf, assistant director of growth management.

The city of Gainesville cannot pull similar records without doing a manual search one record at a time, said building official John Freeland, who added that the city issues about 9,000 permits a year.

Building permits expire when no work has been done for six months, according to the Florida Building Code.

Allen is on a crusade to get the county to inventory its open permits and inform homeowners, require contractors to close them out and give homeowners amnesty for the oldest permits, and for the state to require title companies to search for open permits and sales contracts to require sellers to attest that no expired permits exist on the property. She has emailed local and state elected officials with no response so far.

Her situation might have been avoided under the current Florida Realtors-Florida Bar sales contract, a boilerplate form used on many sales, but not required by law.

Sellers must say that they have no knowledge of any open permits or unpermitted improvements. Buyers are obliged to check with local building departments about any unresolved issues. If any are found, the seller has five days to get a cost estimate for any needed work and then five days before the closing date to resolve the issues. The closing date can be extended up to 10 days due to delays by building inspectors. Any failed deadlines can cancel a sales contract.

If the costs exceed a set amount under the contract, the seller can pay the excess under the standard contract or under the “as is” contract and the buyer can accept the property as is and get credit for the set amount at closing.

Prior to the update, the FAR-Bar contract said the sale was subject to “requirements imposed by governmental authority,” but did not mention building permits specifically and buyers rarely searched for permits, according to the contract manual.

Following the hurricanes and construction boom of the last decade, many unsuspecting owners were confronted with code enforcement violations well after they bought their homes, with no recourse against sellers, the manual says.

That was especially an issue in South Florida, said Marla Martin, Florida Realtors spokeswoman. She said the contract update was done in 2010 because buyers and lenders were already doing a lot of checks and to match the permit language in the Contract for Residential Sale and Purchase, another boilerplate form used in Florida sales.

Aaron Bosshardt, president of Bosshardt Realty, said the issue has only come up in the last couple of years. He guesses that could be because people have more money to put into their homes and are finding the old permits as they take out new ones.

Since the recession, a lot of those contractors aren’t around anymore to finish what they started, he said.

“We are educating all our Realtors and buyers that they should have that search done,” he said. “The problem is the seller is required to disclose it, but in some cases the seller has inherited an open or expired permit from 20 or 30 years ago.”

Lash, who also is a licensed real estate broker and general contractor, said the ease of searching computerized records also has led to more unpermitted improvement or open permit cases.

He has seen cases where owners had to pull up old shingles because they weren’t nailed to current wind load codes.

Depending on the situation, he said owners may be able to negotiate with building officials to accept the work if it met the code at the time it was installed.

He has also seen cases where inspectors did not log the final inspections, so the permits come up as expired.

Lash said that in most cases the contractors just didn’t bother to get a final inspection because they were busy, especially before the recession, and building departments were as overwhelmed as the builders.

“A majority of cases are unintentional consequences of being extremely busy,” he said. "I don’t think the overall intent of the efficiencies were a result of ‘I’m trying to get away with something.’”

Wolf said that since 2010, the county has notified contractors and property owners about expired permits when they come in for new permits. For newer permits, the county sends out warning letters before they expire.

He said the county has denied permits if a contractor has several expired permits, but does not go by a set number.

“They’re told they need to come up with a plan for resolving these before we issue further permits,” Wolf said.

n some cases, he said a contractor never goes on the job, in which case they should request a revocation of permit. Contractors go out of business or can’t make arrangements with the owner to let in an inspector.

Wolf said the important thing is to resolve the permits in the interest of public safety, especially involving electrical or structural work.

Freeland said the city of Gainesville has not denied new permits and has no requirements to close out old permits, except in cases of code violations.

He said the city and other public agencies “have been bombarded with public records requests for those permits” since the contract change. Banks have also asked for permits to be disclosed and resolved before issuing loans.

A lot of the searches are done after a closing date has been set, when they come up as a last-minute surprise to everyone, Freeland said.

“We’ll work with them to get it resolved. We’ll close it out administratively if that’s possible. It’s a hiccup that could hold up a closing, so they are a real big deal when people have based their life decisions on this,” he said.

Allen said once the roofer got a new permit this summer, a building inspector signed off on the roof at final inspection the next day, “but I don’t know if the roof was done correctly because there was no interim inspection (in 2005).”


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## steveray

Do they actually have the right to not issue in Florida because of this? I know we can't here.....


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## mtlogcabin

Not when I worked there in the early 90's. Can't deny a new permit because of an outstanding/expired permit here. One may have nothing to do with the other. Re-roof and water heater change out for example and when the property changes owners then it is not right to punish the new owners for something they did not do.


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## ICE

We can and will deny a new permit if there is an expired permit.  That being said, discretion is required.  For example it would be foolish to deny a permit to replace a roof because of an expired permit simply because there could be damage done if the roof leaks.

Similar to that might be certain electrical permits.  If Edison shuts off the power because the bill went unpaid, Edison will not restore power until the building dept. releases the property.  That requires a permit.  So they can't keep ahead of the power bill and then they find out that there is a twenty year old expired building permit for the replacement of windows.  Now I tell you that the windows next to the front door have to be safety glazing.  How about an electrical service upgrade?  If we deny the permit and the building burns down because a thirty year old panel board lit up who's at fault there?

What if the water heater took a dump?  Are we supposed to deny them hot water because a new furnace went without inspection five years ago?

Better to issue the permit and require a new permit for the work done under the expired permit.  And there again, discretion is required.

Here in California we have a push for solar that has overshadowed this issue.  We can't deny a permit for PV just because there are expired permits unless the solar is intended to be placed on an illegal structure.  So if the addition that they want to put the solar on has an expired permit for the addition, no PV permit.  If the addition was finaled but then the furnace was replaced no problem.

The implication is that pursuing expired permits is an administrative task that has no connection with life/safety.

There was a time when I would not let a permit for a furnace, water heater or service upgrade expire.  Those can injure or kill people so I hounded them until I could perform an inspection.  Well that's not official policy and it creates plssed off people.  I have been instructed to follow official policy.


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## fatboy

We send out the letters, then if no response make several more attempts to resolve. If it is something we can inspect without entering the structure, roofs, siding, porch covers, etc., we just do it. If a homeowner comes in 2 years later, we will reissue the permit for the original fee, and close it out. Usually comes up at a sale, buyer doing due diligence. We do not hold up new permits though.


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## JBI

When I worked in direct enforcement, we had in house policies for dealing with expired permits. We always tried our best NOT to delay a closing, part of that was understanding older codes.

In cases of subsequent owners that got stuck with an older permit that slipped through the cracks we were especially courteous.


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