I've been helping my sister in law and her fiancé find a house. I got an excited text from her saying they were preparing an offer. There was an issue with the crawl space under the kitchen that the seller was aware of and were preparing to fix before closing.
She sent me the engineering report at 2:30am and I couldn't sleep, so I took a look at it. I started off looking for foundation issues when I stumbled across the phrase 'enclosed area on the deck'. The owner had decided that the kitchen was too small, so they blew out the back of the house and extended the kitchen to include part of the deck.
The engineer recommended stabilization because a deck is obviously not meant to carry the weight of kitchen items. They literally threw some plywood down over top of the deck, removed the rails, and built a kitchen.
They are adults, I didn't tell them not to make an offer, but I did look on the county website and didn't see any permits, explaining to my sister in law that the two of them could be subject to the county coming in and condemning the kitchen. I advised them not to move forward unless the seller was willing to apply for retroactive permits, which at a minimum would mean opening up the walls for inspection, but likely would fail the county engineer because I am certain by looking at just the pictures from the engineering report that it's not up to code.
I feel bad for the seller, I am sure they spent a small fortune on this and it will likely prevent them from selling the house.
Posted by mistereousone