By Paul Bianchina

It’s an all too common situation. You find a perfect home for sale in an ideal neighborhood. It’s been beautifully remodeled, and it has everything you’ve been searching for. Even the price is right. Something tells you it might be too good to be true, but you put in an offer anyway, and it’s accepted.

You start doing all the paperwork, and sure enough you discover the catch that you always somehow suspected was there. The sellers did all of that remodeling work without any building permits.

So now you’re faced with a dilemma. You really want this house. The sellers insist that all the work was done by licensed contractors, and that they have full documentation and photographs of all the work as it was being done.

The sellers also tell you that they’re willing to allow any type of inspection on the home that you’d like — except for one by the city.

They explain that they had a bad experience with a building inspector on a previous home, or that they have an ongoing feud with the city over their water bill, or they’re protesting the fact that the city hasn’t fixed the pothole on Main Street yet, or some other reason that they refuse to become involved with the local municipality.

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