Implications of lots of non-permitted work in a house purchase/sale Looking at houses, we have found one that has been completely redone (footings to rafters in many places) but without permits for the most part. The original house was from 1908, it was redone and added onto in the 1970s, and the current owner redid nearly everything in the 2000s-2010s. I know the owner so I'm not personally worried about the work (he also had plumbers/electricians out for work outside his expertise). We like the house, but I'm worried about the future implications of trying to sell a house of entirely un-permitted work. Has anyone had experience with this type of situation? Here are some sub-questions related to things I'm most concerned about, but any related experience is welcome. Are there any legal implications with a lot of un-permitted work on a home? i.e. would I be responsible for permits/fines if any? Will not having permits be a &quot;non-starter&quot; for any processes? I.e. mortgage, insurance, valuation, etc.? Will not having permits reduce the value of my home? Will having lots of unpermitted work make it harder for me to sell the home at a later date? If I want to ger a permit for work I want to do on the home, will there be complications?
Consult a lawyer These issues are quite common and their impact depends on your jurisdiction (usually local governments handle this) and the attitude of your potential lenders/buyers. In most cases, local governments have the power, in extremis, of ordering the demolition of unpermitted work. However, this is normally done only when the work is irredeemably unsafe or adversely affects the amenity of neighbours. More common might be an order to make good any defective work, possibly to current rather than historical codes after which they will retroactively grant the permissions. Some lenders will refuse to lend if there are unpermitted works. Others will only lend against the unimproved land value less the cost of demolition. The same is true of insurers. As for buyers, well, its making you stop and think, isn't it? Common solutions are to make your offer contingent on the current owner cleaning all this up before you close or offering less to cover the risks you are assuming. This may cause you to miss the property but that's the risk you run.
Every lot on the subdivision is and always will be acquired “through the Developer” Unless the developer still owns it. Somebody is the heir or assignee of the Developer - that’s who you need to seek approval from. Even if the Developer was at some point a company that got liquidated, the right of being the Developer would transfer to the creditors of that company.
You can read about Magnuson Moss here, but it only applies to warranties on goods, not services. As you note, the warranty on the unit is still valid. As for agreeing, it is not unusual that a consumer is not aware what all they are agreeing to when they buy a house. One of those myriad signatures that you put on myriad documents was your agreement to contract terms in the pile of papers that you were handed. If you trace through the entire pile of pieces of paper, you should find something saying that you agree to &quot;all of the attached conditions&quot;, which is where you are supposed to say &quot;Wait, what conditions?&quot;.
The fact that you're not a native speaker of English doesn't alter the legal situation. If you literally had no understanding of English but for some reason you signed a piece of paper, then you might argue that there was no agreement in the first place, but obviously you do speak some English. Most people don't actually understand what contracts mean (on both sides). Contracts are still enforced, based on what the contract says. The move-in data is proposed, not firm, and it even indicates what the charges are if your circumstances change and the dates have to change (whereas is their circumstances change, they wouldn't have a basis for charging extra). It also does say that there will be no refund if you change your mind. So the piece of paper says "No refund". The problem seems to be that there's an "agent" whose statements you relied on, who is ultimately responsible for this problem, and s/he implied that you could get a refund. It's not clear what kind of "agent" this is (is he working for you, or for the owners?). You'd have a somewhat different legal basis depending on which it is, but you could sue someone in either event, assuming that you could actually persuade the court that you were given false information which you relied on. The statement "they will refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is false; the statement "they may refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is true. If the latter was the statement that you relied on, then you knew (or should have known) that that isn't a promise, it's just a guess, and if you read the piece of paper you know that it's a promise with no basis. So I would say it comes down to establishing what promise was made to you. Arguing that the agent "made" you sign isn't going to get you anywhere (unless you can prove actual coersion).
While this question was initially posed as a request for legal advice, I've stated some general principles of this kind of situation generically. You are deemed to have &quot;constructive notice&quot; for legal purposes of all documents filed in the public record pertaining to your property whether you know it or not. You are also on notice of anything that a reasonably informed person could assume to exist from observable facts (like that existence of municipal water and sewer service) upon an inspection of the property. In terms of reasonable expectations, almost every urban home is subject to multiple utility easements. If your home has (or most homes in your neighborhood have) municipal water service, municipal sewer service, electrical service, and cable or telephone lines, there are almost certainly easement in place for all of these things. Typically, in a contract for the purchase of real estate, there is a fixed deadline for you (or a title company on your behalf) to review the public record to find what is there. If you don't object by that deadline to any title issues, you can't get out of the real estate contract or undo it. Typically, the deed from the seller will contain an exclusion from the warranty of title for &quot;all easement of record.&quot; If the title insurance policy contains an exclusion for easements, you can't make a claim against that title insurance policy. Even if there weren't an easement in the public real property records, anything that has been there since 1911 would benefit from a &quot;prescriptive easement&quot; which is the equivalent of adverse possession a.k.a. squatter's rights, for easements. In New Jersey, for example, the prescriptive easement time period is usually twenty years and never more than sixty years. Furthermore, utilities usually have the power, delegated to them by the government that grants them permission to operate or by the state, to create new easements at the very modest price associated with a reduction in fair market value caused by the easement. This is often estimated to be half of the fair market value of the unimproved land per square foot times the actual square footage occupied by the utility when it isn't working on its infrastructure. Easements, once established, run with the land, and generally can't be removed without the permission of the party for whose benefit the easement is granted a.k.a. the owner of the dominant estate (in legal terminology, the utility's rights in the easement are called the &quot;dominant estate&quot; and the home owner's rights in the property subject to the easement are called the &quot;servient estate&quot;). There may be implied in law duties of someone using an easement to restore damage caused after using it, but it wouldn't be worth suing over that for a bit of displaced grass and a rose bush.
I find that Petri Mäntysaari: The Law of Corporate Finance: General Principles and EU Law: Volume II, p. 115-140 can pretty much explain the reasoning for this. It is in chapter 5.3 on Terms non-binding as intended. The contract might not contain all legal requirements for some reason, or a clause might become invalid due to law changes. Sometimes the contract becomes unenforceable for some reason or another in part or full. The salvatorian clause is there to fix the defective clause to become the closest estimate to the written form that is legal and not deficient instead of being just dropped from the contract. This can save a contract from becoming unenforceable or making it void in whole. Especially look at Page 140: If a contract term is invalid because of a mandatory provision of law, it will be replaced by legal background rules(§306(2) BGB). One of the standard ways to address the situation is to use a so-called salvatorian clause. [...] This [reinterpretation/fixing of deficiencies] would not happen without a specific contract term. (See §139 BGB. On the other hand see also §140 BGB. Compare DCFR II.-7:302 and II.-7:303) A caveat though: if the alteration to the clause needed is too big and substantial, the contract as a whole can become void and null, no matter what the salvatorian clause said. It cannot overcome some burdens and there are regularly courts (I know this for Germany) voiding contracts due to such serious deficiencies. Notes BGB is the German "Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch", an english translation exists §139 says "If a part of a legal transaction is void, then the entire legal transaction is void, unless it is to be assumed that it would have been undertaken even without the void part." Example: a sale lacking any payment is not a sale (which starts a legally required warranty) $140 says "If a void legal transaction fulfils the requirements of another legal transaction, then the latter is deemed to have been entered into, if it may be assumed that its validity would be intended if there were knowledge of the invalidity." Example: a sale lacking any payment can be interpreted as a gift if the intent was to do so (and does not grant warranty) DCFR is the EU Draft Common Frame of Reference, so the above rules are to be found in the document as follows II.–7:302: Contracts infringing mandatory rules - p. 565. Paraphrased: "if a clause in a contract violates a law, substitute the law for it, courts shall decide if that alters or voids the contract. They may fix contracts to cure them." II.–7:303: Effects of nullity or avoidance - p. 574. Paraphrased: "void contract (parts) can constitute unjustified enrichment, transfer of items might not have happened, courts may fix contracts to cure." From the DCFR document one can read what happens in absence of a Salvatorian clause, especially for UK law. II.–7:302: I. Contracts contrary to law 1 All European systems deal with contracts which contravene some rule of law, as opposed to contracts which are contrary to fundamental principles of morality or public policy. 5 In ENGLISH, IRISH and SCOTTISH law the standard texts all include chapter headings such as “Illegality”, or “Statutory Invalidity”. See further Enonchong, McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 19.28-19.36, and, for the confused development of Scottish law, Macgregor in Reid &amp; Zimmermann vol. II, chap. 5. II. Effects of infringement 8 The general starting point in most European legal systems is that contracts violating legal rules are void. There is often, however, considerable flexibility in the law. 14 In ENGLISH and SCOTTISH law, while an illegal contract may be void, it is more often presented as “unenforceable”, in that neither specific performance nor damages are available to the parties. Thus a party may withdraw from an illegal contract with impunity. Courts will take notice of illegality of their own motion and dismiss actions accordingly (Chitty on Contracts I27, no. 16-199; MacQueen and Thomson, Contract Law in Scotland, § 7.15; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.17-19.27).). Again, however, there is flexibility in the law on contracts infringing statutory provisions. There are several cases in which the courts have considered whether giving effect to the statute requires the nullity of the contract as a supporting sanction (see e.g. St John Shipping Corp. v. Joseph Rank Ltd. [1957] 1 QB 267; Archbolds (Freightage) Ltd. v. S Spangletts Ltd. [1961] 2 QB 374, CA). English law is currently under review by the Law Commission: see its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions. The Commission’s provisional proposals were to the effect that courts should have the discretion to decide whether or not illegality should act as a defence to a claim for contractual enforcement. But the discretion should be structured by requiring the court to take account of specific factors: (1) the seriousness of the illegality involved; (2) the knowledge and intention of the party seeking enforcement; (3) whether denying relief will act as a deterrent; (4) whether denial of relief will further the purpose of the rule rendering the contract illegal; and (5) whether denying relief is proportionate to the illegality involved. II.–7:303: Notes 5 In ENGLISH law the general rule is against restitution but it is possible in exceptional cases where the claimant is not in pari delicto with the recipient, or the transaction has not been completely executed, or if the claim can be formulated without reference to the prohibited contract (Treitel, The Law of Contract9 , 490-504). IRISH law is similar (Clark 314-19), and so is SCOTTISH law (Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia vol. 15, paras. 764-765), although in one Scottish case where, by statute, contracts using old Scottish measures were void, restitutionary recovery was allowed in respect of a sale of potatoes by the Scottish acre, on the ground that there was no moral turpitude in such a transaction (Cuthbertson v. Lowes (1870) 8 M 1073; see further Macgregor, (2000) 4 ELR 19-45; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.22-19.26). The English Law Commission in its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions suggested that a court should have discretion to decide whether or not illegality should be recognised as a defence to a claim for restitution, various factors being taken into account. In addition the court should have a discretion to allow a party to withdraw from an illegal contract and to have restitution where this will reduce the likelihood of the completion of an illegal act or purpose, although it must be satisfied that the contract could not be enforced against the claimant, that there is genuine repentance of the illegality, and that it is not too serious.
I'm assuming you are talking about something like this You didn't specify where you live, but in many places it is illegal to block the sidewalk with a car. I just looked up my local ordinances and it is there. In fact, it is your driveway, but often the land up to and including the sidewalk is considered part of a public easement. Typically you are required by law to maintain any grass in the easement, but if the sidewalk were to fall into disrepair, the local government would fix it. Information on easements can also be found in your local ordinances, here is an example in my area. Should I fight this ticket? You can try, but I doubt you will win. Is there anything I can do to my driveway to allow me to actually use it? I would suggest asking on Lifehacks. And post a link here to your question if you do, I'd be curious to know what they come up with.
Since the contingency is in the contract and has not been removed, if the purchase falls through due to not selling the existing property, they will get their earnest money back. That was the whole point of putting the contingency in the contract in the first place.