When you drive around looking for an average single family house in a city like San Diego, the most common size you will find is the typical 2-bedroom/1-bath house. Not that often you also see 3-bedroom/1-bath single family houses. A 3-bedroom/1-bath house is usually a 2-bedroom/1-bath house which at some point was added onto.
The 3-bedroom/1-bath houses very often have non-permitted third rooms which RE agents like to call dens or bonus rooms and in my experience, the square footage of those rooms is very seldom added onto the total square footage of the house. Why? Because the additions were built illegally. Since those rooms were not part of the original construction and added on afterward without City or County permits, the property documents most often leave those rooms out unless those rooms were grandfathered in years back. If that is the case, then those non-permitted rooms are considered conforming and the square footage reflected on all the documents.
That is not always the case though.There are a lot of houses which have undergone remodels and additions without permits and unless you do your own research, you will never find out. There are a lot of things you do not know about the properties out there until you do some research because the RE agents do not know it all and sometimes even if they do, they do not share that kind of information. For information on the county offices and resources click here
To give you a couple of examples: 
1) I had a client who had bought a property on a multi-family lot. His plan was to demolish the existing house and build 15 condominiums but he found out after he bought the lot that the zoning only allowed 5 units and not 17 units like the RE agent had told. If my client had gone to the city and the county to do research before purchasing the property, he would have never bought that property because he wanted to invest on a lot to build more than 5 condominiums.
2) Another client of mine bought a duplex and even the ad on the paper read: “Rent one and live in the other one for free” as the slogan. The front house had a full kitchen and the back unit had a smaller kitchen but it was a still a kitchen with a small stove and oven, a fridge, a microwave and a kitchen sink. When my client moved in, he noticed that the back unit did not have the stove, the microwave or the fridge in it anymore, only the sink. Why? Because the dwelling was a single family house not a duplex which is what they told him he was purchasing.
If you purchase a house that has a non-permitted room or rooms and you want to prepare plans to pull permits for a home design remodel or addition, the plans would have to include the existing non-permitted room or rooms as part of the proposed home design project and therefore comply with today’s code in order for you to get approval from the city or county of jurisdiction. That room would have to be added onto the new alterations you want to get permits for and brought up to code. That is why it is always recommended that the homeowners do a thorough investigation at the county and city offices before buying a house. This way you can avoid unpleasant surprises.
At Home Design 4u we dedicate our efforts to providing our clients with the best home design service as well as advising them on anything related to buying or selling their home, preparing home remodel or addition projects or any task related to home improvement, construction defects, code violations, etc. Please feel free to review our pages and let us know how we can help you. You can email us at: homedesign4u@att.net or call us at (619) 692-0165.
