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Bay Area and city permits

Bought a house few years back as a rental in the Bay Area. After looking for months found one reasonably priced and good rental income. From looking at all of the different homes I noticed that basically all of them have unpermitted work done. The house I bought is no different and has converted garage, and a whole bunch of other work that was very obviously done without permits. On one hand, every house in this area has obvious work done since most of the houses are 70 years old, and none have permits. But on the other, I want to change some lines to the house and update electrical box...which would all require permits and am worried about that once the city shows up, I will have to rebuild the whole house. So far the city just appears to want to rip off the homeowners and are mostly interested in making money. And once they are there, you have no leverage or a way of fighting back.

Would like to hear some experiences or advice from people that went through similar situations. Are the city inspectors all powerful and can dictate what you do and how you do it? Do they have deals with certain contractors and if those contractors are hired, they will be more lenient?

submitted by /u/MeowMeowORaiders
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/c7gdg0/bay_area_and_city_permits/
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