What Happens If My LA House Has Unpermitted Work?
Unpermitted work does not have to stop a remodel, but it does have to be dealt with once a permit application puts your house in front of the City. The two routes are to legalise it by bringing it up to code and permitting it retrospectively, or to remove it - and which one applies is decided by what the work is, not by how long it has been there. Expect it to add weeks rather than days to the front of a project, and to be discovered at plan check rather than politely ignored.
Why it surfaces now and not before
An unpermitted addition can sit unnoticed for decades. What changes is applying for a permit: the drawings you submit describe the house as it exists, and a plan checker comparing that against the permit record sees the difference.
In the City of Los Angeles, permits are issued by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. That is the body the question ultimately goes to, and it is far better to arrive with the discrepancy identified than to have it found for you.
The two honest outcomes
Either the work can be legalised or it cannot. Legalising means demonstrating that what was built meets current requirements - which frequently involves opening finished surfaces so structure, framing connections, electrical and plumbing can actually be inspected rather than assumed.
Where the work cannot meet requirements, or where the cost of proving it exceeds its value, removal becomes the sensible answer. That is an unwelcome sentence and it is better read at design stage than at plan check.
Why "it has been there thirty years" does not help
Age is not a defence and it is not an approval. A converted garage, an enclosed patio or a bedroom added under a previous owner is judged on whether it meets requirements now, not on how long it has gone unchallenged.
This surprises people more than anything else in the process, particularly buyers who inherited the work and had nothing to do with creating it.
What it does to the schedule and the scope
Add weeks at the front, not days. There is investigation, there is drawing what is actually there, and there may be opening up work purely to allow inspection of things that were closed years ago.
It also changes scope in a way budgets rarely anticipate: the work is not improving anything you can see. Spending money to make an existing room legal delivers no new kitchen and no new bathroom, which is a difficult trade to absorb late. It belongs in the plan from the beginning.
What to do before you buy or before you draw
Pull the permit history. Compare it against what is physically present - room count, footprint, any converted space. Where the two disagree, you have found the question before it finds you.
If you are buying, do it before closing rather than after. If you already own the house and are planning work, do it before design, so the scope is drawn with the answer in it rather than around a gap.
Frequently asked follow-ups
Can I remodel the rest of the house and leave the unpermitted part alone? +
Sometimes, and it depends on what the work is and whether your scope touches it. What you cannot rely on is it going unnoticed, because the drawings submitted for your permit describe the house as it stands and are checked against the permit record.
Will legalising it mean opening up finished walls? +
Frequently yes. Structure, framing connections, electrical and plumbing generally have to be seen to be signed off, and things that were closed up years ago cannot be inspected through plasterboard. That is usually the least popular part of the process and the least avoidable.
Does unpermitted work affect selling the house? +
It affects what you can represent about the house and it commonly surfaces in a sale, which is why many owners deal with it while remodelling rather than under time pressure during a transaction. The specifics are a question for your agent and your lawyer rather than for a builder.
Is a garage conversion done by a previous owner usually permitted? +
Often it is not, and it is one of the most common examples we see raised. Whether it can be legalised turns on what was actually done - ceiling heights, egress, structure, and how the services were run - rather than on how it looks once it is finished.
Who decides, in the end? +
The building department with jurisdiction over your address. In the City of Los Angeles that is LADBS; in an independent city such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica or Calabasas it is that city own building department, which is why the answer can differ a few streets apart.
Want the same answer applied to your specific project? Onn personally reviews every inquiry.
Written by Onn Cohen-Meguri, founder and designer at Design Onn Point. Onn has spent 20+ years designing and building in Los Angeles. CSLB #1133368.
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