Hi everybody!
my name is Alex
with Bay Cities Construction
and I'm here to tell you
that if you're thinking about going
to the city to pull your own building permits....
You're going to the
MIGRAINE FACTORY
[THEME MUSIC]
Folks...
I've been in construction
for over 14 years
I don't like going to pull
building permits.
Hundreds of jobs later
I see it all the time.
Homeowners are
trying to save money
trying to get the process going
with with the city
inspectors and - the plan checkers
and they go down to the city to pull their permits
ONLY to be
left with a substantial amount of disappointment.
Okay
So let's talk a little bit about pulling your permits
and what the process is,
and what you're going to need
the city will issue you one of these
if you have all your ducks in a row this is a job card and this is where the
inspector will sign off every time he does an inspection
these are full set of plans
if you're doing a home addition or major remodel
you're gonna need a full of plans.
You're gonna need architectural plans
structural plans
you're also gonna need some calculations
you can sit down with
a city plan-checker and go over all these plans together
IF you are missing
any of their various
pieces of information
you're not gonna get your
building permits that day
over the years many of you have sent me questions ask
me questions during our meetings
and I want to go over some of those questions
together with you
and see if you get some value out of.....
these questions
I think that getting the plans on your own is probably a
HORRIFICALLY BAD IDEA
there's three different ways that you go about getting your plans okay?
you go through an architect,
you go through a draft person,
or you go through a general contractor
like
like our company
like Bay Cities Construction (the best contractor in the South Bay)
An architect will go and get them for you
a draft person "sometimes" goes and gets them for you
and a general contractor
"sometimes" will go get for you
some contractors don't like to deal with the city
So you should know that...
that - that's an option
that you may
have talked to some contractors and THEY told you
"I don't I don't get the permits - YOU got to go get them"
so know that there's other people out there that
would do it for you
I really don't think so
I think there's absolutely no savings
Some people like to be part of the process
of construction
and that's cool
but saving money?
I don't think you're gonna save money - you're probably gonna have to go
two or three times
to get what - hopefully
your contractor or your architect could
get you in one trip
you're gonna miss work
uhh..
you may
you "may" get delayed because quite frankly you
don't know what you're doing
so you may not have all of the stuff that the city
requires and that in itself will cause delays
think about it every time you
go to the city and you get denied the permit
you go back and you ask the draft
person, or the architect or, whoever did the plans for you to get these
corrections done
and then that will take two weeks
and you gotta come back again
that back and forth big time delay
and then the third one which is I think the
most significant one
if you go about getting these plans yourself
okay
you may have somebody design this for you and it may be the scope may be so big
then you couldn't afford it, you can't afford to build it that is the biggest
tragedy that I see a lot that happens a lot people will go out they get a set of
plans drawn up for them and it's extremely expensive to build the the
over-design or for the person's budget you should always, always, always, design
towards a budget. You should have a target budget up front and I have some
content for that that about that that I'll link to this video.
so there's pitfalls if you hire a contractor or architect or the drafts
person to do this for you okay and you got to hear both sides of story so you
can make an informed decision either way there could be delays because these pros
the the professionals they could be swamped with work right now the economy
is going good there's a lot of work out there there's a lot of people either
building jobs or or in the process of getting jobs approved so understand that
you may experience a few months worth of delay may spend 3-4 months to get some
plans approved some to get some plans drawn up and approved okay so so
consider that another pitfall is that you could get you get a lousy design
right like some people would say okay look I need X number square feet you
guys take care of it and for some reason another they got a set of plans that
function-wise isn't right there wasn't enough thought put into it so that that
could be a potential pitfall it doesn't happen often but I've seen it the last
one you hear stories about that but I really don't think it's that common
where you pay somebody for the plans and they disappear and then it never deliver
plans you know it's happened I suppose it could happen but I think that's an
easy one that you can mitigate by making sure you hire somebody who's reputable
hiring somebody who's local is really really important because they'll have an
established rapport with the plan checkers and people at the city that's
that's a good way to stay out of trouble folks getting your permits approved and
getting your plans developed is an important part of your construction
projects get a team of pros don't don't do it yourself I think you're gonna save
yourself a lot of aggravation if you need any more information about
construction services getting your plans built you can go to
www.baycitiesconstruction.com
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follow us on Facebook my name is Alex Rodriguez reminding you that you don't
need a contractor you need a team of pros