Renovating? Start with a D.I.Y. Building Permit

By Harlon E States

This is not your typical building permit nightmare, no not by a long shot. It all began two months before we closed on our house this past January.

We found our house with a dream water view located across the street from Noyac Bay and within walking distance to Long Beach. Summer and winter water views all for under $600k. What's the catch?

Well, there is a little bit of a down side. The property is located along Noyac Road, which is now referred to as the Sag Harbor-East Hampton super highway. It's ok with us because the house is situated high up from the road and, oh yeah, did I mention it has nice water views? The first thing I saw in this house was it needed a lot of work, but those water views kept us on track to buy. I dreamed of building a large deck and sipping cocktails at sunset overlooking the water.

So we went and got an architect to draw up preliminary plans and then I was off to see the Southampton building department. Most people are cringing right now at the thought of going to the building department but my surprise was a pleasant one. The building department looked at my preliminary plans and made a few suggestions and said that it should be no problem. Happily I went back to the architect and told him what we needed to do to finish the plans. My hope to get the work started and be in the finished house by May. Our January closing date came and one week later I planned a trip to the building department when suddenly my building contractor suggested that we use an "expeditor" from the area to help get the building permit. I asked why I would need them if I already spoke with the building department and they said if I used an expeditor, it would take about a week or so. I was told that these expeditors do this for a living and there would be far fewer problems if we used them.

I took his advice, and instead of going to the building department myself, I went with the contractor to the expeditors' office on January 22, 2008. Sure they were nice and told me not to worry about a thing and that it would be taken care of. On February 15, I called my contractor and asked where the permit was. He said he would give the expeditor a call. One week later we still hadn't heard from them so he called their office again. The "expeditor" said he was meaning to call him because we needed to complete some more paper work and get some construction insurance.

The insurance took another 10 days. Now we are in March - no permit. I keep asking the contractor where the permit is and he says don't worry he will complete the job by mid-May. "Are you sure?" I ask.

"Yeah, no problem," I am told.

On March 11, I got a call from "the expeditor" and he asks me who my plumber is and can I get him to sign the application. I ask him if he is pulling an early April fools joke on me. The line goes dead, and then he asks me again who the plumber is. I tell him and then proceeded to lace into him. Why don't we have our permits in a timely fashion?! Again the line goes silent.

My contractor then tells me that the permit application will be hand delivered.

On March 20 I drove to Nassau County to meet with my contractor because we needed to redo the application and get it signed in front of a notary. I am guessing the original application was outdated and was too old to be used by the building department. The contractor then hand delivered the new application back to the expeditor the same day. This is on a Wednesday.

On Friday I called the building department and asked about my application, assuming of course that the expeditor hand delivered it on Wednesday, or at the very least Thursday. It turns out he took off Thursday and Friday and no one at his office knew where the application was.

Well by now I was getting a little cranky. So I called the expeditor's office and demanded to speak with the owner of the company but his recording came on and I left a message that I was a little upset and that their office has performed at a level of consistent gross incompetence. I left my number but didn't receive a return phone call.

Finally on March 24, my application was hand delivered by our crackerjack expeditor. I took this opportunity to call the expeditor's boss and speak with him about how they have messed up plans to rent my property for the summer. It was evident that my house would not be ready until at least June 1, 2008 or later, much later. I spoke with a lovely sounding woman who put me on hold and then returned promptly to tell me that the boss would call me shortly.

After a few days I called the building department and begged them to locate my permit application and please try and help me by having someone review the application to see if there were any problems so that I could remedy them right away and get my permit.

Once again I can't say enough about them. They were very helpful and got back to me that same day and told me someone would get on my application right away. True to their word I got my permit on April 3, two and a half months after my expeditor took control of the situation. My advice to anyone looking to get a permit is to try and do it yourself.

Back to Contents