Your nest has been empty for a while and you can almost see retirement on the horizon. Your thoughts turn to migrating south to a warmer climate, or maybe just to a smaller nest. Even if this is part of a five-year plan, there is no time like the present to get all your ducks in a row.
Perhaps you are thinking of all the makeshift solutions you’ve come up with over the years in lieu of actual repairs – the window that has to be propped open with a ruler, the closet door that won’t stay closed unless you stick a piece of folded cardboard in it, the hole one of your once-rowdy boys kicked in his bedroom wall while roughhousing that was “temporarily” covered with a poster 30 years ago – and you start to feel overwhelmed. Then you wonder if you even know where your deed is. The repairs can be done over the course of a weekend or two on a shoestring, and you don’t actually need your deed to sell your house. An experienced real estate attorney should recommend that you think about updates you’ve made to the outside of your home, however.
It could be that after your third child was born, you decided to convert your garage to a bedroom and now your house is the only one on the block with a window where the garage door should be. Remember that summer when the mosquitoes convinced you to add screens and a roof to your patio? A few years later, you realized you still wanted to sit outside sometimes, so you built a deck or a front porch. You were handy so you did the work yourself and never went to town hall or you hired a guy who does side jobs and you’re pretty sure he didn’t get the necessary paperwork.
Your local municipality was supposed to issue a permit and then sign off on the completed job and issue a certificate of occupancy. Whether this didn’t happen because you didn’t know it would be a big deal, or you were afraid your taxes would increase or you meant to take care of it later, if you’ve made structural improvements that alter the footprint of your home even a little, finding out that you need a certificate of occupancy after you’ve entered into a contract to sell your home can and will delay the closing, so why not call Mark H. Weiss PC at 631-462-5577 today, before you accept an offer, and talk to us about the home improvement projects you’ve done over the years. We’ve handled thousands of closings; with our experience and expertise, we can help.