By Marcie Geffner - HSH.com
The freedom to do whatever you want with your home is an attractive benefit of home ownership. For some, that freedom means converting a garage into a bedroom, adding a deck, enclosing a sun porch or making other improvements without getting a building permit.
But if you buy a home with unpermitted renovations, it can create a financial nightmare for you, the new homeowner.
Unpermitted renovations aren't easy to uncover, says Kim Bregman, broker/owner of Optima Properties, a realty brokerage in Boca Raton, Fla. One way to find them is to look for anything in the home that appears to be inconsistent with the original floor plan.
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http://library.hsh.com/articles/first-time-homebuyers/buying-a-home-with-unpermitted-construction.html