Probably very little. In the light of today, there was zero reason to not get a permit. Honestly I think my friend and I both allowed our friendship to make this feel less business / more personal.
And I agree with @Krayz , there are good reasons for requiring permits. I totally accept the fact that I have fucked around and will now be finding out.
Not saying it’s performative BS fwiw (like I said, I’m getting my own deck permitted). That’s why some of my initial questions were along the lines of how sure are you that your stairs were built to code?
If the code inspector sticks to those questions, it’s clearly in the public interest. If they’re mired in procedural stuff (historic district regulations that make unsafe things more difficult to fix) then he should fight back hard.
Generally the permit fee and inspection isn’t a huge deal compared with following a super burdensome process where they want design review for every little thing. It can literally turn a 1 week project into a 5 month one.
This isn’t giving me a good feeling. Either he assumes it’s going to be a historical preservation issue or he doesn’t know why and he isn’t even sure if he built it according to current building codes.
It’s unfortunately complicated by your friendship, but he’s the tradesman, so morally and legally he’s assumed to be more knowledgeable than you about the process.
I’m pretty sure it’s this.
As stated, I’m totally happy to take my medicine because I definitely knew we should’ve gotten permits and made the conscious decision to not care. And I’m happy to protect him to a point, I just have no idea how this process works. If boldfaced lies are what are required to protect him, and these lies expose me to significant consequences, that’s a different conversation. He 100% knew what he was doing as well.
Is there a good reason why it might not have been built according to code?
If it were me, I’d be pretty pissed if my contractor-friend built my stairs not according to code, unless I knew and approved of his reasoning.
It was more like I trusted him to build me good stairs, and he did. I could have asked or made sure they were to code, and I didn’t. To blame that on him just doesn’t feel right or honest.
I was not aware that licensed contractors face stiff penalties for flouting these rules, and knowing that now I’m surprised he wouldn’t have insisted on permits out of self-interest.
This was Marketplace’s lead story today, but they were talking about it as it pertains to people accessing their home equity and refinancing.
I just looked at the link. It has to be completely gutted and redone. I am not experienced with NY construction costs, who you have to grease for how much w/r/t permitting and stuff like that, and of course you can spend as much as you want LDO, but in my experience (former construction accountant) you could get that redone with brand new appliances and furniture for under half a million imo. They do it on HGTV and TLC all the time.
Every time I watch one of those shows, I always think to myself “There is no way I could anyone to that for so little”.
It might be more if there are structural issues but shit 2500 sf houses get built ground up for less than that and sell for about that in many places.
Nice. Got it. Yeah that’s a code violation in your neighborhood. Going to need to tear down the whole thing and resubmit new plans to the city.
This budget sounds way too low for NY. Maybe if you are doing all the basic reno yourself and just counting the cost of materials, but even then I think you would need to pay for significant electrical and plumbing work plus hire an engineer or architect to help get the plans approved.
Yeah I mean the cost of doing business in NYC might be a lot more so that may be low, I would really need to know and there’s just no way of knowing without being in it. I am just coming from my own experience and we could go “cheap” on mats and keep it low. But sub costs and permitting and architectural/engineering will be what it is. Someone paying what they paid for that place in that condition would not want to do that, though.
Right, another factor is if they want to sell a townhouse for mid 7 figures, the buyers are going to expect luxury finishes
Thornton knew what’s what!
RIP Paxton Whitehead.
My 2 million assumed luxury finishes throughout. Still a wild guess.
Homeadvisor is not perfect in my experience, but it can give you a good ballpark to start. In that ZIP code for plumbing & electrical (I am treating this as new construction because it essentially is):
No idea what an engineer or architect will charge. There may be plans for other similar places in the area they can just buy and use rather than having something drawn new. The big bucks are going to be in the finishes, fixtures, all that jazz.
If they have structural issues it’s a whole other pain in the penis
Just for some additional context, here’s an article about a $500k reno for a 700 sq ft apartment. People on the local real estate forum think they went overboard.
Hard to say precisely, but you could easily spend $1 million and the better part of a year renovating that place.
If someone quoted me 1 million and 1 yr, I’d snap call (assuming luxury appliances and finishes).
