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Do this before you consider selling

This is a really good tip. Before you list your asset for sale, whether it's an apartment complex or whatever it is, do an open or expired permit search with your city or county. Basically, an open or expired permit search will show you all the inspections that weren’t recorded by the applicable municipality as being final and complete. How does this happen? Let's say you have a unit in your apartment complex that needs an air conditioner replaced. You hire an HVAC guy, he pulls a permit, goes out, and does the work but then never calls to have the final inspection done. That's one way. Another way could be that he did call for the final inspection and the inspector came out knocked on the door of that unit and the tenant wasn’t home so they couldn’t get in to complete the inspection. The HVAC guy has to call in for a re-inspection, but oftentimes they just forget, they never got the message from the inspector, there are all kinds of ways how these things happen. So the easiest thing to do is before you list the property for sale, call the city or county and do a property search for open or expired permits. Once you get the list, make calls to all the vendors and arrange with them to call in a re-inspection. The inspector

will come out and look at the work, and as long as it meets code and everything was good, they'll approve it and close out the permit. If something wasn't done correctly you may have to spend some money to have the work done correctly and then have them come out and re-inspect again. The buyer wants a clean bill of health, so it doesn't matter who did it or how long ago it was, you’ve got to get it done. Now sometimes the original vendor is no longer in business, or died, or retired or whatever the case may be. So then you can hire another vendor in that same industry to have it done. You’ll most likely have to pay this new vendor because it wasn't his problem.

Please do this before you attempt to sell it because once you get in the due diligence period this could be a deal killer.

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