Give it some time and more knowledgeable people will come and answer. I know a red-taged item cannot be put in service. It would be against the law for someone to turn on your fan, or to hook up electrical service to it if it were not hooked up already. For a professional, it would likely be a licensing issue. For you, it is an outstanding violation that probably means you cannot sell your house. There is essentially a lien against your title if you continue to ignore it. These are all my guesses, based on things I have read. I googled, "What happens if I don't fix a red-tag violation in my house" and found one town said this: "Red tags must be recalled for inspection and paid, if applicable, within seven working (7) days. Failure of the contractors or owner/builders to request and receive re-inspections before proceeding with additional work may result in disciplinary action or a fine against the contractor or owner/builder." If you live in an incorporated city or village, go to the website, there is likely a FAQ with lots of info and maybe your question is answered. If you are not in an incorporated area, go to the county site - whatever governmental entity sent out the inspector. See if you can figure out the answer. Or just call the permit office and ask what happens when a red tag is ignored.

Hi Lisa, First I appreciate all of the generous time and energy you spend on this forum answering questions like mine. Thank you. YOu are welcome... and WOW, you are tossing up a DOOZY for me here.... We just received bid from contractor. Amount stated above. Please detail out for us what exactly you are planning to remodel... how these improvements compare to the homes within a 2 block, and then 1/4 to 1/2 mile radius of your home... and why you are desiring to do these remodels at this particular point in time. We have no credit card debt and have 8 years left on a 15 year home loan (we owe $160k). This tells me that you are putting a quite large amount of your monthly investable growth funds into market-risk non-growth real estate equity (which simulates treasury bonds in your family balance sheet... except without any yield/income.) Are you sure this is the best choice of account at this stage of your financial life? Our mortgate runs about $1800/month. We have a car payment of $600; normal utility bills; and money taken out for our retirement and childrens' college funds. Are you completely tapping out your qualified allowances in tax-deferred and tax-free ivnestment accounts? We are wondering what would be the best way to pay for our extensive remodel? My husband has stock that we're planning to sell when it gets to $50 and will be worth about $70,000 take home. Until that happens, we can't sell and must assume we'll need to finance the entire amount. A) Why can you not sell now? Why would you not sell if the stock is not performing? B) Why WOULD you sell if/when the stock begins upward momentum and proceeds through the $50 mark? SO, should we go with a home equity line of credit our refinance? So many more important questions to explore.... HOW to get the funds is much less important than WHETHER you are proceeding along the best and safest path. In the current and foreseeable future environments, your cost of funds will be less (likely much less) with a HELOC tied to Prime... but again, that's the least of importance of all your considerations. I hate to put our hopes on the stock but feel it will eventually get to the amount we need in order to sell. Stock accounts are not a savings account... savings accounts pay interest that you can accumulate, and have a planned exit when they reach the accumulation levels you desire. Stock accounts are shares in business ownership, and you are tossing your hopes in along with the waves & tides of not just the particular business, but its industry segments, as well as the overall economy. If you want a stable, reliable, safe accumulation account... stocks ain't where to do that. Also, we cannot rely on end of the year bonuses in this present economy. Last year my husband received his entire year's salary as a bonus but we're pretty much guaranteed that won't happen this year. He's hoping that might change year from now but, again, that's not a sure thing. So, thanks for any advice you can offer. Sounds like you also need to build sufficient reserves and proper income insurance to protect for the variability of your husband's career income. Higher-end executives, financial and legal professionals often face these issues, and you can't afford to ignore it & simply "hope for the best." MUCH to cover here... and not enough details to responsibly serve you generically. Hope the above helps, at least in bringing for the gravitas of the situation, and the greater depth of exploration it all deserves. Cheers, Dave Donhoff Strategic Equity & Leverage Planner

geoffrey-b "remodeling without a permit." Yes. If you scroll back to the top of this page you'll see that is the title of the thread. This entire page is a series of comments by people "investigating" that very thing. I came here looking to see what other people had said about that issue. I decided to post my story. I don't trust my city planning/building department. They have shown a clear intent to use this system as a cash cow. I can afford $300 for an attorney. More than that actually, because my real estate attorney is $280 per hour with a 4 hr minimum. I don't want to pay him, and I don't want to pay the thousands of dollars the city wants. My wife and I will use that money for a trip to Greece. Believe me, I would much rather be going through the inspection/approval system. My town has taken an adversarial approach and I choose not to pay into it. I have already proceeded. If and when we sell, I will check the Yes box where the disclosure form asks if work has been done without permits. I will show buyers the before and after pictures. If they don't like the quality of my carpentry, they won't buy it. I'll sleep well at night because I know the quality is better than the city-inspected, city-approved new home currently being framed next to a friend's house across town. I'm using 1950's solid Doug fir reclaimed from several different tear downs at the extra expense of pulling nails. They're using wained, scalloped, knotted Doug fir that wouldn't have made #2 and better grade twenty years ago, but which is now proudly sold in all home improvement centers across our nation. Not their fault of course. We've stripped our forests, there are 300+ million of us and we all want nice comfortable homes. That's the quality of material we have left. I'm as guilty as anyone of my demand resulting in the sucking of raw materials from the ground and the woods. As much as we've done to recycle by shopping on craigslist, we've also spent a lot of time and money at those home improvement centers. But that's a whole 'nother thread.

Again, no one can answer your questions about your local code and permitting authority without at least knowing where it is. Building codes vary by location, even when the codes don't vary, building departments will differ in responsiveness, prescription of codes and remedy for violations. There are 89,004 different coding districts in the U.S. and while there may be a lot of commonalities there are distinct differences. For example, the fence analogy would not work in my community as any fence under 8ft and without anti-intrusion measures (barbed wire or electrification) doesn't require a permit. Whether you are replacing, repairing, or making it taller doesn't matter. Also, in our city, the building department is easy going, and while there are fairly strict zoning and code rules here, our building department is incredibly responsive and helpful to homeowners. The city we are building in, which is only 1.2 miles from my current home, has fewer codes but the building department isn't responsive and tends to be very adversarial. The city my wife grew up in has no zoning ordinances at all. You can construct an office building in your backyard (and yes, people have), there is a 10 year debate running on the council whether or not a building permit is even required as long as all the individual inspections are done and the CO is obtained. One last time. We can give you general advice, some things are easy - new electric and new plumbing almost always require a permit. Some things are much harder, installing a fence for example. Your only options are either talk to your permitting authority, or an expert in your area (a local contractor). You can be on here all day long, loving some advice, hating some advice and becoming much more informed only to find that much of what you learned here doesn't apply to you.