We all know life can be complicated. Here is one complication that I want people to understand. If you put your house on the market you are required to have a truth in housing inspection done. The inspection is done by an inspector who is approved by the city. They have it spelled out pretty well on the hard to navigate and find anything City of St. Paul web site.
One of the things the inspector looks for is open permits. The kinds of permits that are needed to do say electrical work, plumbing and other projects done by contractors or home owners. If an open permit is found it is noted on the inspection because all permits must be closed before the property can change hands. This is a relatively new law.
They check for open permits on this web site. I highly recommend you check your home for open permits. To get rid of open permits the home owner calls the city inspections department and asks to have an inspector come out and look at the work, if the inspector is satisfied that the work was done and is up to code he will sign off on it.
Now one would think that if there was an open permit on a house and you know that it can't change hands with that open permit on it, that a closed permit would be desirable. A closed permit just means that the permit has been out there and open for so long with no activity that they mark it closed. To meet the requirements for the sale of a home in St. Paul the open permit has to make it to the "finaled" stage. There is no such word as finaled, they made it up and it has no meaning to anyone but them. The word does not exist anywhere except on the City of St. Paul web site.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that a closed permit is the opposite of an open permit. The permit needs to be "finaled" which means . . well to me it means the home can change hands.
I recently found an open permit on one of my listings from 2002. The current owners bought the home with the open permit on it because when they bought it we didn't have the same laws. Now the permit is closed, but city inspector will have to look at the work, verify that it was done with a visual inspection so that the permit can after all these years be "finaled".
Wow, that’s an amazing law. There are no required inspections in WA state, some buyers don’t even hire the suggested home inspector to verify (scary!).
Just today a client in an inspection noted that where they lived a city inspector had to come out (I think it was AK).
Great posts, been reading quite a few of them.
The City of St. Paul is NOT unique for using the non-word “finaled”. The company I work for also uses that term to indicate an account that is no longer “active”. Accounts are never “closed”. They’ve used this term for over 30 years.
Can you tell me where I can find this law in the city’s website? I have been looking, but can’t locate it…and I close tomorrow with a home that has an open permit!