Clearing HPD violations?
Anyone out there have experience clearing old HPD violations? I inherited a dozen of silly HPD violations when i purchased my home in 2004 (these are dating back to 1999-2001, the result of a contentious relationship between the previous owner and a tenant). Most are for things like chipped paint and floor tiles. At closing,…
Anyone out there have experience clearing old HPD violations? I inherited a dozen of silly HPD violations when i purchased my home in 2004 (these are dating back to 1999-2001, the result of a contentious relationship between the previous owner and a tenant). Most are for things like chipped paint and floor tiles. At closing, my bank put some $ in escrow until these are cleared up. now that times are tight i’m looking to get my money out of escrow. i’ve fixed all the items listed in the violations but am concerned about inviting an inspector into my building, fearing that they’ll find lots of other silly things. are my fears unfounded? will they simply look at the violations on the books or are they more thorough?
thanks…
I can echo the statements above. We closed on a house with 7 violations (smoke detectors, peep holes in the apartment doors and an obstructed hallway to the roof access).
We fixed those individual items (but didn’t touch anything else because we were about to renovate) and had the inspector come. He commented (kindly) that the house was basically a dump (and of course he could have written lots of other violations if he wanted to). We told him we were planning to renovate and actually in the process of filing for permits and he just nodded.
Two weeks later we got the report from HPD and he had cleared our violations and not written any new ones.
thanks for the advice folks…
Go for it. A small apartment building I used to own came with 59 HPD violations. I made sure all the apartments complied with the Housing Maintenance code and that the hallways and yards were free of obstructions and then paid to have the Inspector in. I cleared all but one violatio that day.
The remaining violation was for a smoke detector he said didn’t work. I had just had it installed and knew it worked but it was too high on the wall for me to retest in front of the inspector. Turns out it was kind of tall for him, too. He hit the button obliquely and it didn’t beep. I put a 5 gallon bucket of drywall compound in place for the next inspection.
It’s been my experience that inspectors are overbooked, rushed, and wanting to look only at what they’re paperwork instructs them to look at. If your building is in reasonable and safe condition, they shouldn’t be hassling you, and you should have little to fear. Get it over with and get your money back.