Forum Archive

What would you do in this Cert. of Occup. situation?

A little history, we are trying to buy a single-family attached townhouse. Even before we executed the contract, we had a feeling the enclosed 1-story back addition (20′x8′) might be an issue as we had gone on the Dept. of Building website, poked around, and saw that in 2000 some permits were issued but never closed out. We told this to our lawyer who says we won’t know for sure until the title search is done but he had flagged this issue to the seller’s lawyer beforehand. Sure enough, in the last week of Dec., the title search comes back and show that there a Cert. of Occupany in 1940 but a new one was never filed after the job that was not signed off in 2000. A formal letter was sent to the seller’s lawyer.

Its now a month later, we’ve gotten our letter of commitment from the bank on Jan. 14th – it expires on Feb. 23rd. Turns out the sellers have not done anything this whole time. The story is their expeditor has told them they need to hire an architect to have drawings drafted and stamped but they are “taking bids” was the last we heard. (I don’t actually trust the seller’s lawyer because its not the first time she has mis-represented her client. She told our lawyer that we had all been discussing a 10,000 deduction to the price if we take on this CoO issue – um, no we’ve never discussed this.) ANYWAYS, our bank will not give a mortgage on a house without a valid CoO. They said they will not even consider an escrow process of any sort because its against conforming loan/Freddie/Fannie guidelines apparently. To extend the commitment, they will charge 1/4pts for the first 30days and then 1/4pts for each 15days after that.

So what to do? Time is ticking on our mortgage commitment. We are both financially and emotionally invested. The only thing our lawyer has said is that we can do is to write them an ultimatum letter giving them the required 30-day notice to come to closing or to give us our down-payment back.

The job description on the DoB work permit says, “to demolish and re-construct on new footing one story frame enclosed porch at rear of existing dwelling. There is no change in use, group, occupancy or egress under this application.” However we’ve seen electrical outlets and a base-board heater in the addition… Does anyone know how fast this can happen if drawings can be stamped and done in 1-day?

Is there a second option to demolish this addition/renovation and to have the city come out and negate the 2000 permit and get a fast Cert. of Occupancy that way? We don’t particularly care for the addition anyways…

We can’t imagine why the sellers are not more cognizant of what is happening unless he is getting bad advice from his lawyer… this house has been empty since the summer of last year when his mother died… I can’t imagine why he would stall the process on purpose…