Selling my home - find prior work done without permits - help?

[pvanosta]

CALIFORNIA.
My wife and I bought our home in 2002. It was a former duplex, convereted to a single family home. The upstairs kitchen was turned into a master bath. Downstairs, a non-load-bearing wall was knocked through to provide access to the living room from upstairs.

Now we want to put our home on the market, as prices have almost doubled in 3 years in our area.
We find out (when we try to take out a HELOC to cover transitory expenses) that the house is still recorded as a duplex at the LA County Registrar.

We contact the City of Long Beach. They tell us to go to the planning department with a schematic of the work done and to request a 'Permit after the fact' When we get there, they turn this into a much bigger deal, saying this could take months to resolve.
We will need an inspection and the inspector may very well ask us to break open the floor under our shower or under our toilet, just to verify the work is up to code.

If it is not up to code, we face horrendous cost to put it right.

I would like to know what my recourse is, vis a vis the previous seller (who did the conversion), the Title company, the realtor, etc.

I would like to find out what my options are in case things get ugly.

I appreciate any help/advice you can provide and will be happy to answer any additional questions you may have.
Thanks
Patrick

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by pvanosta

CALIFORNIA.
My wife and I bought our home in 2002. It was a former duplex, convereted to a single family home. The upstairs kitchen was turned into a master bath. Downstairs, a non-load-bearing wall was knocked through to provide access to the living room from upstairs.

Now we want to put our home on the market, as prices have almost doubled in 3 years in our area.
We find out (when we try to take out a HELOC to cover transitory expenses) that the house is still recorded as a duplex at the LA County Registrar.

We contact the City of Long Beach. They tell us to go to the planning department with a schematic of the work done and to request a 'Permit after the fact' When we get there, they turn this into a much bigger deal, saying this could take months to resolve.
We will need an inspection and the inspector may very well ask us to break open the floor under our shower or under our toilet, just to verify the work is up to code.

If it is not up to code, we face horrendous cost to put it right.

I would like to know what my recourse is, vis a vis the previous seller (who did the conversion), the Title company, the realtor, etc.

I would like to find out what my options are in case things get ugly.

I appreciate any help/advice you can provide and will be happy to answer any additional questions you may have.
Thanks
Patrick

**A: read the Seller disclosure statement. Was there a disclosure that there was no permit for the work?

[pvanosta]

No such disclosure was made.