This same thing happened to me when I lived in Eastgate (Bellevue) in 1992, I was selling a house after living there for 8 years...the buyer's appraiser noticed that there was never a permit to enclose the one car garage to a family room. I checked with the building department and they said I would need to go through all the expensive hoops like you mentioned, including the possibility of returning it to orignal garage space. Then a friend said to update the house's square footage and number of rooms with the "Records and Elections" department. No problems once the county record matched the property. Crazy.

Tammy, First thing you should do is look over your Title Insurance, some policies may have coverage for this. Contact your agent to see if he/she can help get you in contact with the title company you are insured with.

you shouldnt have opened the bees nest if you werent ready to get stung. you dont bring evidence against yourself to a building department, it should have been handled differently but now you as the current owner will have to deal with the problem. You will have to check with an attorney if you will be able to recoup any money. You will need to know if the seller you bought the home from was the owner when the addition was put on. then on the sellers property disclosure, they should have disclosed this, if not you will use this basis to recoup any damages. Good luck with working it out Tammy

Agree on the attorney response, but in addition I think you should pin down the time the addition was constructed. It might be possible that at the time it was done, no permits were necessary. I'm not familiar with Thurston county zoning rule, but my thought is that perhaps they weren't that strict 30-40 years ago.

Tammy,

As others have said before me, this is one for an attorney. We would be happy to provide you with contact information as needed.

Good luck

I would also suggest consulting with a real estate attorney. You may have good recourse against the sellers based on the disclosure statement and the documentation you have. I have not validated this, but I have heard that you can claim with the building department, and I think the term is "naive buyer," which can help reduce the costs of penalties. Worth a shot. Good luck.

Tammy

If you can still locate the seller and you believe they have financial resources an attorney may be able to help you recapture these unexpected costs. I'm wondering why you didn't question the accuracy of the disclosure immediately if it stated there were no additions or conversions. I would think a garage conversion would be pretty obvious. Did you have a home inspection done when you purchased? What did the inspector say about this conversion? Perhaps he has some liability for not pointing out defects which could have tipped you off before you closed. Keep in mind, if you choose to take this to litigation, a judge will look you in the eye and ask "Just how difficult was it for you to determine the lack of permitting?" That will be followed by "Why didn't you do that before you closed?" It's probably worth a phone call to a local real estate attorney but pursuing it may not be worth the hassle. Get some free advice from the agent who represented you in the sale first.

This is a question most ideally suited for a real estate attorney. The closest experience I've had with this was with a house that I represented the buyers on....the seller's disclosure statement said there were no other sewage related fees outside the normal water/sewer bills. It was talking about sewage capacity charges that King and parts of Snohomish gets tagged with (maybe elsewhere ,but I just know about these two). Anyway, I had repeatedly asked the seller's agent about the existence of sewage capacity charge and the answer was always no. The disclosure said no. So I dropped the issue. A month after we closed, the listing agent called me up and said the sellers got a sewage capacity bill and wanted to know if she can give it to me to give the new buyers to pay. I said no way. It's the seller's responsibility to pay it since they said...repeatedly (and i had proof in email) that there were no such charges.

So...this could be somewhat close to your situation...they said there was no additions/remodels, but there was. But ... I would highly recommend consulting an attorney for this matter.