- You can't build a septic system, you have to use sewer because you're in city limits (later rescinded when they realized they would have to pump my sewage up to the city sewer.
- You need to hire an engineer to make sure your lumber is ok (we milled our own lumber)
- You need to hire an architect to make sure your plans are ok
- You didn't finish in 6 months? Buy a new permit please.
I know there were a million more things like this, but it's been over ten years and some things you don't want to remember... Contractors act like I'm taking food out of their kids' mouths by wanting to do the work myself, and the municipality is on their side.
Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. And having lived in neighborhoods with septic systems most of my life, a little neglect can go a long way.
Unless you’re building in the middle of nowhere (far from anything labeled a “city”), there are obligations to those around you.
Signed, someone whose neighbors properties have dilapidated buildings in various states of disrepair.
Why on earth would the city or the neighbors be "responsible" for that?
I'm building a house now. I sent the county... A picture of a square on a map. No plans no inspections nothing. Fuck all that. I build based on what seems reasonable after a cool Busch Light and then I just do it without asking permission from anybody.
Half my county did the same. It's not rocket science, and the world here hasn't fallen apart or burned down. But you will be told the opposite to get locked into expensive contractors and corrupt inspectors and the cash extracting nightmare licensing and permitting systems that surround that.
And before anybody gets too excited... this is all 100% legal if you pick the right spot.
The sewer one is obvious, since it could be a public health issue -- if you screw it up you could wind up contaminating local water sources (or just stinking up the area). Issues with the lumber you use, or with your building plans, could potentially result in your house collapsing in such a way that it might damage your neighbor's property. And getting a new permit if you take too long is probably just a way to force you to check in and make sure that you're not deviating from the earlier plans you filed.
Hell, if my neighbor's tree falls into my property and causes damages I can't be sure I'd be fully compensated for my losses. You can take someone to court, but they can't give you what they don't have.
People also just don't want to live in slums filled with run down barely standing shacks since it hurts their property value too. Part of living in a community means giving consideration to other people around you. The closer you are to others the more responsibility you have to be considerate of your impacts on those others.
In even the smallest town, if any appreciable percentage of new builds required custom handling... the system would instantly be person-starved and start backing up.
Business-as-usual is the fast/efficient path from a paperwork standpoint. Anything odd is (a) discouraged and (b) looked at with annoyance because it takes more time.
One reason it's almost always cheaper to tear-down fire damaged houses with still viable framing. No one wants to take the time to quantify exactly how much the framing was damaged.
Granted people aren't rich where I live so we'd rather them live in potentially a subpar house and maybe have it fall in on them than be homeless and die from the elements.
Re below: USA / Arizona. Pick the right county and no code inspections.
You got lucky. Houses with lift stations are a thing. Usually a bunch of houses will go to a common lift station, but that's not always the case.
My dad runs a company installing and servicing various sewage treatment solutions and I spent a lot of weekends as a child going to nice houses on service calls because their lift station threw an alarm and it wasn't pumping their sewage.
I looked into building where I was (because land was surprisingly cheap compared to houses) and was told to allocate 2 years and $250k for permits. A significant chunk of that was paying an architect to respond to the city and resubmit the plans. This was back when most houses were under $1M, and the lots we were looking at were around $200k, so the permits were literally more valuable than the land, and a pretty large fraction of the value of the improvement.
