Open Permit on a House I am about to Go into Contract on

(I should add, we also had an Alt 1, which included full new electric and it meant NOTHING in re: the old permit – in fact, they wouldn’t let us close the Alt 1 b/c the old permit was still open). Six years!!!!

empathie00

in General Discussion 6 years and 8 months ago

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deva | 6 years and 8 months ago

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Dear Brownstoners,

Really would appreciate your help. I am about to go into contract on a townhouse that I just discovered still have open permit from 2001. I am getting reassured that the sellers plan to hire an expeditor and close the permit but I dont know if it will happen within the timeline I need it to be and I dont know if they are not able to close it how much effort it will take from me to do it. I hired an architect to look into this and he said he can’t give me any definitive answer as to what it will take to close the permit and whether DOB would want to restart the whole process again given how long ago the permits were open.. So one option is to get an escrow but again i dont know what the reasonable amount. Another option is to get a price reduction — again not clear how much it will cost me to clear the issue.

Any advice on this matter will be GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you!

mrfrio | 6 years and 8 months ago

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I signed a contract on a gut reno with two open DoB permits at the end of 5/22/18 with the sellers giving me non-commital assurances that they should be able to clear them in 1-2 months. I closed on the purchase on 10/26/18, over 5 months later and probably the only reason they got it done is because my commitment period ended on 10/1 so they had real risk of losing the deal and I was chasing their architect, their lawyer and their broker almost daily in a foaming at the mouth raging lunatic kind of way. Based on feedback I received here on this forum (you can see my recent posting) , the knuckleheads I was dealing with were not even the worst of the worst. I am sure you were told this along the way but what I have been told by architect friends that the DoB is a black box and they can accept or reject filings almost at the whim of the particular person you are dealing with there. The “expediter” that my sellers employed made several mistakes on the filings up un til the last piece of paper where she entered the last block and lot number on a filing (it’s basically like putting in the wrong address). Again your seller may be better or may be worse…

daveinbedstuy | 6 years and 8 months ago

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Big red flag. In a sense, it’s possible that no amount of money, however large, in escrow will guarantee a timely resolution. I seriously hope you have a competent lawyer who is handling this for you. My guess is that you don’t. Do not trust either the seller or the broker representing the seller to get this done. Your lender might not even loan the funds without it cleared up before closing.

deva | 6 years and 8 months ago

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Thank you so much for the pointers. One important factor is I plan to undertake significant renovations on the property that would require permitting. Can I just file for new permits that would supercede the old one?

Thank you!

mrfrio | 6 years and 8 months ago

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When my seller bought the property there was a legacy open Alt1 permit from the previous owner. My seller, as part of the reno, filed a new Alt 2 and proceeded to get that signed off. I think they assumed that when they got the Alt2 done that they could go to the DoB and withdraw the Alt1 as it was filed under a previous owner and a previous architect and furthermore they did a gut reno that was cleared under the Alt2 so an old Alt1 was irrelevant. However the DoB took a different point of view and said that my seller had to clear the legacy Alt1 by refiling the Alt2 plans in satisfaction of the Alt1. However it was not just as simple as refiling things. I believe they had to get all of the experts who worked on the Alt2 to sort of “re-certify” all of their work as part of the Alt1 clearing process. As a disclaimer, I was not in the picture when my seller purchased the property and I am not an architect or an expediter but I spoke to many people during the long 5 months who educated me on the process and this is my understanding of what went down. Summary: from eve ryone I have talked to (architects, lawyers, brokers) open permits are a big risk and the people you are dealing with have all the information and are generally speaking not trustworthy at all. But I’m not bitter!

deva | 6 years and 8 months ago

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These comments are tremendously helpful to me. So grateful to this community. Thank you!

empathie00 | 6 years and 8 months ago

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Don’t do it!!!! I tell you from long experience – it took us 6 years to close an open electrical permit from the 1990s. – at one point DOB was threatening us with having to open up sidewalk and street to redo ALL electric from main to house just to be able to supersede. Put the onus on the sellers, do NOT think you can do this yourself unless you’re ready to take on a nearly full time job and risk potentially thousands and thousands of $ in extra work.