This is part 1 of our presentation we do at Realtor events or any events interested in our permit and code violation resolution services.
Hi everyone, this is Benjamin Sens from BOSS Construction your South Florida permitting and code compliance specialist coming to you today to show you some things we’ve been working on. This is for residents in South Florida. This is for people in the South Florida business community. And this is for real estate professionals. Here’s a little bit of background about myself. I used to be a city inspector in Miami Gardens and in western handling, permitting and code compliance issues. So I know the other side of the counter, I’m a general contractor, I have code enforcement certifications. My background is in urban planning. So I understand a lot about planning, zoning, code enforcement, basically anything having to do navigating with the city or the county, what we call the local jurisdictions, people having authority over businesses and building permits and any type of licensing. My background also is in real estate. So for you real estate professionals out there I understand very well the hardships that sellers face when trying to cure these violations, things they already paid someone else to do things they inherited from a couple properties, a couple property owners ago and those we will go over. We’re going to handle some common permitting and code violations today, our residential or commercial or industrial properties, we’re going to go over some best practices. And we’re going to go over some things that you could do as a property owner or real estate professional, on how to prevent things from happening last minute when you’re closing on your property and give you good information on when you’re working with a contractor. Hopefully, someone who’s licensed and insured, how to make sure that they’re doing the right thing and get your project done right.
So they don’t you know, not finish
your property end up leaning the property or having any issues on on the residential side. We’re going to go over some additions. This is our first one from Biscayne Park, which is a small jurisdiction out of North Miami. This is a particular city that has something called re occupancy inspections. And it’s not a city, it’s a village because that’s what they call it like the town of Davy, the village of Biscayne Park. Okay, so this is a small jurisdiction in in near the city of North Miami, and North Eastern Miami Dade County, again, a lot of old housing stock, a lot of problems going on within these particular houses where people have renovated them without permits. That’s something that we get into. And also people have inherited violations from other property owners. This particular violation where you see the staircase, six months before the property was being sold, the owners decided who were absentee owners from the west coast of the United States to go ahead and renovate the entire property. So what happened Was code enforcement cited them for building and bathroom for building permit kitchen and bathroom renovations. Other interior remodeling, keep in mind guys, everything basically needs a permit, even if it’s a single family residence. Now you guys can act as your own contractor. But the authority having jurisdiction, in this case, Biscayne Park, they want to come out to make sure the electrical, the plumbing, everything is done to code. This is a particular case where we have the kitchen on the left side. And on the right side where you see this picture, there’s a staircase, why do I bring the staircase to you? Because it’s very important that when we bring the city or the building department into the property, that everything else meet compliance or they might not close that permit. In this case, the staircase was wooden and it was removed by a previous owner. So it was a health safety violation for any kids. People could go right off the staircase. There was no railing So this is something that we had to do to pass inspection and we had to do it really quickly because they were closing on the property. We found a a steel manufacturer, someone who will build a prefabricated stair wall to fit the size of this dear opening. Again, this is something I want to bring your attention because this wasn’t what the original building permit was about. Something that I try and do as a general contractor, and code enforcement practitioner, is I try and identify the deficiencies because I know it could be very hard for sellers or people owning properties. Once we identify those deficiencies, we’re able to determine what needs fixing or what needs to be brought into compliance. But again, we always have a plan. We always have a plan and there’s very little surprises when you’re working with someone like boss construction group who has the expertise that you guys need. So we’re not we’re not just handling the person Meeting we’re handling qualification and inspection services to make sure your things go right with the city. This is a second example of West Park. This is over in Broward County. We’re moving up right on that county line. This is a roof that was done without any permits. So West Park is a newly incorporated city from 2005. A lot of the structures were from Broward County would from unincorporated Broward County, meaning that this was a roof that was done without a permit. And the City of West Park this didn’t have a lien on the property. But they cited these people who own this rental income property for doing a work without a permit in 2012. In 2018, they gotta sell the property. So they did while they didn’t have a lien on their house. The buyers wanted us to permit the roof. So what we had to do was make sure that the 10 tags which are those silver looking things and the paper that are underneath those Miami Dade County approve shingles that those past uplift town And that there was the right amount of nails and spacing. I like going through the pictures with you guys. So you can see that a roof in fact has a 10 cap, a hot mop, it has a paper inspection. It has a final inspection where the after they lay the shingles. So these are things that are sometimes covered up where we need to take pictures, do documentation, sometimes we need to get an engineer involved. In some jurisdictions, they don’t even let you get an engineer. depending on the age of the roof, you have to get a new roof, but it’s very important. Every building official sets their own standard in their jurisdiction, that we have a good relationship with the building official, and we know the current policies of the city because this is all we do. We work with this stuff all the time.
Moving further north in Pompano Beach. This was a property that I was able to help out a kaise agent with who’s a good friend of mine. And it was a property that in there. It was a little bit of hardship for the seller. They were selling the property, an investor was buying it to flip the house. And they found code violation, basically open air condition, which is just just to the left of those two hot water heaters. And, you know, electrical, illegal addition, again, we found a lot of safety issues there. What brought us to the safety issues was the open air condition, there was an open air conditioner permit. So I know that when I call the city to come out to inspect the air condition, naturally, they’re going to see other violations that cross these electrical plumbing violation, illegal addition. That brings me to another point, guys, we look out for the best interest of the transaction and the property owner. This wasn’t a case where I was looking to bring these things into compliance, because the new owner was just gutting the house anyway and going to pull permits for that. What we did in this case is we decided to credit the buyer a little bit of money to handle these situations. And it also helped them with their permitting fees for their renovation. They were doing a lot more work. So sometimes we’re able to bring the transaction to the finish line and serve as an owner’s rep, giving the seller, the buyer, the agents, everyone the right information to make the right decisions. Our next one, we’re moving a little further south to Hollywood jumping around here. This is a panel. This wasn’t an open permit, oh, this wasn’t a code violation or lien. This was an open permit from 2013. I helped the Romanos close their window permit, closed their addition permit, and they were looking to sell their house, they wanted to do something else. They wanted to put a kitchen in their house, City of Hollywood, like many of the cities, they say we’re not going to let you pull a permit. On on, we’re not going to let you pull a new permit until you satisfy your old permit requirements. So these guys knew that before they worked on their kitchen, they had to satisfy that addition. The electrical contractor didn’t call many of the electric inspections. So we were closely in the picture with the electrical chief in the city of Hollywood to solve their panel violations to get their permit final and develop cost saving and cost effective solutions to get that done. We salvage the old panel brought everything into compliance, and the homeowner was able to close the permit. This was in a single family residence. Keep in mind things are different when you’re dealing with condominiums. Multi families in a single family house, it’s a detached structure. So when we get into other points with multifamily and condos you’re dealing with an attached structure, some properties which might be tenant occupied or we have to receive Association approval, all of those things are different variables. Why I bring these to your attention is because every single case is different. The corrections are different, the dynamics of the property are different and the solutions are different.
Next I have a screen enclosure in Miramar. This is a good example of a screen enclosure that was modified. Going back to silver lakes and geo homes in 1996. These guys hired a separate contractor to build the slab and the screen enclosures and the pools, which is very common practice. So these guys who left the slab in the screen enclosure open, were you’re stuck. The contractor leaves the permit open from 96 when you close on the house house has been sold twice. Hurricane Wilma came by another couple hurricanes came by and that white column in the middle that’s wrapped and beautifully decorative that had a metal post in it that was holding up the screen enclosure. Why I bring up this is the several owners modified the screen enclosure and they put metal on the roof and they ran electric through the screen enclosure. So we have to keep in mind when we’re modifying structures from the original plans that an engineer signed and sealed, we may need to either remove the structure, we might need to get an engineer brought out to recertify the structure because myself as a general contractor, or a homeowner, we can’t modify and engineers plans. People want to make sure that these screen enclosures meet when load calculations. They’re not going to end up on the owners roof or in their window and it causes huge health safety issues. So this permit we were able to close very easily with the slab and the screen enclosure. We remove the electric and we deal with these situations all the time. This is an old floresta in Boca Raton city of Boca Raton proper. This is a electric. This is a gas generator, which converts propane gas into electricity and brings it into the house. Why I bring this up to you is because this is a beautiful home and it’s an excellent An example of a plumbing and electrical and a violation that was also about 12 years old. So this particular violation, the city had done roof inspections for plumbing, no electrical inspections, no structure landscaping inspections. So this we had to make sure all the components were working correctly satisfy the fire marshal’s office and also satisfy electrical and plumbing requirements. This we were able to close out so the estate could sell the house and everybody can move forward. But keep in mind, the buyer wanted disclosed out that was very important to get to getting the transaction done, which we were able to help out with some of these matters we can help out with in a matter of administrative close out in three to seven business days. Some of them take 10 you know every again like I said every situation is different.
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