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(we did a DIY addition build during COVID in the US in 2021) In Michigan, you are absolutely allowed to do your own build on your own land. It just has to pass

(we did a DIY addition build during COVID in the US in 2021) In Michigan, you are absolutely allowed to do your own build on your own land. It just has to pass code inspection, and it has to pass at every stage. (i.e., they want to inspect structural/electrical/plumbing/hvac/etc, before you put drywall up, to ensure things are actually OK underneath, and then inspect it again after drywall is applied). Getting utilities can be hard and expensive if you are building off-grid. But there are so many vacant lots that already have power+water+gas at the street, that you don't really have to do that unless you really want to live in a specific off-grid location. (Suburbs and some townships make a lot of their money from this, so they usually want you building near their pre-existing utilities and hooking up to it) Sewage tends to be the hardest part -- some places have "most" utilities, but not waste & water. And people assume they can just put in a leech field "septic tank", but since most of the state is already swampland, you have to be careful of how and where you put that, so you don't poison the water. (They will make you get a land survey to prove your location is safe to leech from, and they will inspect your install, and yes people complain all the time about it, but when they didn't do this, people did poison the water all the time, and then accidentally drank their own waste water and make themselves sick, or accidentally poisoned their neighbors water and made those folks sick, etc). People complain about the licensing and permitting and inspections, but honestly, it's all been extremely fair and pretty quick and cheap. If you aren't passing your inspections here, you're likely doing something grossly negligent (or are about to do something grossly negligent).

mistrial9 2y ago
> licensing and permitting and inspections .. are truly crooked in many wealthy areas of California (and elsewhere) today. Everyone directly involved benefits from it, the only direct loser is the newcomer.. source: San Francisco residential remodels
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
91bananas 2y ago
I can give you an anecdote about my parents trying to permit a new garage building on their property in southern California, the process was anything but fair, cheap or quick. The inspector actually raised an unrelated issue on their property about a patio cover that was installed by a previous owner and has been standing for 30+ years, they wanted him to pull a building permit and pay all the inspection fees for it before they would even begin to process his garage permit. Including digging around one of the footings for the existing patio cover to see how deep the footings were. Ultimately they paid some adjusted fee, didn't even have anything inspected. Just basically were extorted by the city in my view of things.
- jacurtis 2y ago
  I had the exact same thing happen to a house I owned in Utah. I had purchased a house that had a mother-in-law apartment in it, which I could offer my parents to live in, as my Dad was in bad health waiting for a transplant. At one point, after about 5 years of me living there, there had been a leak under the sink in the bathroom and at the same time the stove also went out (within the same month). We were doing better financially so we decided to take this as an opportunity to renovate the mother-in-law suite as it was starting to show its' age. We wanted to improve the bathroom significantly (remove the tub and add a walk-in shower), update the very dated materials, and add a gas-line to the stove (since the main kitchen upstairs had a gas stove already, and the gas water heater was on the opposite side of a wall where the mother-in-law stove goes). Anyway, we had a plumber come out and quote the work and he wanted to get a permit for the work. That was fine, I wasn't intending to do anything shady, so we requested a build permit and the inspector came out and told us we weren't supposed to have anything in the basement at all. No kitchen, no side entry doorway, no bathroom, no two bedrooms, no kitchen. The entire mother-in-law suite was around 1,000 sqft, it wasn't insignificant, and he was saying the previous owner never permitted it. We basically got notice from the city that our house was illegal and could be condemned if we didn't first pay permitting and get inspections on the current home, before we do any new work. Keep in mind, I had owned this home for over 5 years when this was happening, I never did the original work, and the original work was now so old it needed to be replaced and updated. The plumber estimated by the plumbing work and code it was built to that it had to have been built at least 20 years prior. Based on the materials and designs of things like vanities, tilework, trim, kitchen finishes, etc I would have estimated that it was also about 20 years old. So yeah we basically got extorted to pay the permitting for work that was so old it was now being replaced. Then we had to do the same thing again for the replacement work. Then on top of that, then next year our house was assessed at $180k more money, increasing property taxes significantly. This was in ~2016.

mistrial9 2y ago

> licensing and permitting and inspections .. are truly crooked in many wealthy areas of California (and elsewhere) today. Everyone directly involved benefits from it, the only direct loser is the newcomer.. source: San Francisco residential remodels

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

91bananas 2y ago

I can give you an anecdote about my parents trying to permit a new garage building on their property in southern California, the process was anything but fair, cheap or quick. The inspector actually raised an unrelated issue on their property about a patio cover that was installed by a previous owner and has been standing for 30+ years, they wanted him to pull a building permit and pay all the inspection fees for it before they would even begin to process his garage permit. Including digging around one of the footings for the existing patio cover to see how deep the footings were. Ultimately they paid some adjusted fee, didn't even have anything inspected. Just basically were extorted by the city in my view of things.

jacurtis 2y ago
I had the exact same thing happen to a house I owned in Utah. I had purchased a house that had a mother-in-law apartment in it, which I could offer my parents to live in, as my Dad was in bad health waiting for a transplant. At one point, after about 5 years of me living there, there had been a leak under the sink in the bathroom and at the same time the stove also went out (within the same month). We were doing better financially so we decided to take this as an opportunity to renovate the mother-in-law suite as it was starting to show its' age. We wanted to improve the bathroom significantly (remove the tub and add a walk-in shower), update the very dated materials, and add a gas-line to the stove (since the main kitchen upstairs had a gas stove already, and the gas water heater was on the opposite side of a wall where the mother-in-law stove goes). Anyway, we had a plumber come out and quote the work and he wanted to get a permit for the work. That was fine, I wasn't intending to do anything shady, so we requested a build permit and the inspector came out and told us we weren't supposed to have anything in the basement at all. No kitchen, no side entry doorway, no bathroom, no two bedrooms, no kitchen. The entire mother-in-law suite was around 1,000 sqft, it wasn't insignificant, and he was saying the previous owner never permitted it. We basically got notice from the city that our house was illegal and could be condemned if we didn't first pay permitting and get inspections on the current home, before we do any new work. Keep in mind, I had owned this home for over 5 years when this was happening, I never did the original work, and the original work was now so old it needed to be replaced and updated. The plumber estimated by the plumbing work and code it was built to that it had to have been built at least 20 years prior. Based on the materials and designs of things like vanities, tilework, trim, kitchen finishes, etc I would have estimated that it was also about 20 years old. So yeah we basically got extorted to pay the permitting for work that was so old it was now being replaced. Then we had to do the same thing again for the replacement work. Then on top of that, then next year our house was assessed at $180k more money, increasing property taxes significantly. This was in ~2016.