If you are a home owner, and you are thinking of doing renovations or installing anything that taps into the existing plumbing, electrical of your home, you may want to head down to your local township or city office to determine whether or not they require you to obtain a permit for the work to be performed.

For the obvious work, like having a kitchen completely gutted and rebuilt from scratch you would obviously need a permit for the Electrical, one for the Plumbing and one for the Building.  This is something your contractor is will usually arrange for you prior to the work beginning.  It also costs money to open a permit.

Local governments have a set of "codes," which are standards for various types of work and how they are to be implemented to ensure a certain level of safety and standards for your protection and investment.  To enforce these codes, inspectors are dispatched to manage the jobs at various stages as sort of a checks & balance between the homeowner and the contractors.

What is often overlooked is that most contractors are only responsible for opening the permits.  It is not, in their best interest to also be responsible for closing these permits out.  Closing the permits out involve the local inspector returning to assess the quality and integrity of the work performed.

If you do not stay on top of this, when you are ready to sell your home, you can be hit with several permits that are still open which will need to be closed out prior to the sale of your home.  This involves coordinating with your local governmental offices to schedule the final inspections for work that in some cases may not have even been performed by you, but by previous owners of the home.  Either way, you are responsible, at that point, for whatever the inspector may or may not find.

It is all a complete nightmare unless you are aware of these practices.  Before you purchase a home, ensure that no permits are still open by the seller.

If you own the home, make sure you stay on top of the permit process with your contractors for any work performed on your home. More importantly, never take the word of a contractor that a permit is not needed.  It is best if you do the leg work and inquire on your own.  If you don't it can cause you serious problems down the line.