permits depend on the communites you are working in. In our area, permits are required on somethings no matter who is doing the work and on some things no permit is required if the home owner is doing all the work.
We are doing the live in a house and fix it up thing. We bought the ugliest house on the block and intend to not make it the prettiest house on the block. We’ve had a place to live for several years and we’ve enjoyed the projects we’ve done. I’m looking forward to a new (not top of the line or over customized) kitchen in the next few months. Sometimes it’s frustrating to live in a house being worked on, but the profit is a lot more guarunteed this way. We hope to sell the home for 3x it’s purchase price when we are done and it’s not an unrealistic figure.
I live in New Jersey. C.O.'s have to be issued before selling and/or renting any property. Permits are needed for any work done on any property.
When we purchased an office building that had been vacant for twenty years and had to bring it up to code and get the initial C.O. for it, I learned more about building permits and the City than I ever want to. When we finally got the damn Certificate, I was dancing through the old office with it. The City would not let us move any furniture into the building without the CO!
Not necessarily. House flipping occurs when someone buys a house with no intention of living in it, does some degree of upgrade work, and then sells it for a profit. Both the houses flipped near me were very habitable. I don’t understand why this is considered bad either. Plenty of companies move people from town to town, for example.