“Potential Home Purchase – NO PERMITS!”

“Dear PoPville,

My wife and I are considering purchasing a house in Brookland that had been flipped quickly by a developer. We submitted an offer, had an inspection done, etc. Other than a few small things and one moderate foundation issue, each of which the developer agreed to fix, one issue we asked about was accessing the permits for the work that had been done. The seller’s agent informed us that the work as done without having acquired permits

(I believe it’s the law that any unpermitted work needs to have been disclosed to potential buyers, so it’s troubling that we had to specifically ask before we discovered this). The developer “feels badly” and is trying to fix the situation through some sort of retroactive permit situation. I’m curious about a) the extent and quality of such retroactive permitting b) any exposure we have to future penalties and most of all c) whether our homeowner’s insurance would cover a house done with either unpermitted work or with these retroactive permits. I’d love to get the community’s thoughts on how to proceed!”