u/deeedubb

My girlfriend and I recently toured a home in Burbank that we really like. It's in our ideal location, checks a lot of boxes for us, and is within our budget. However, after digging deeper, we've uncovered some things that are making us nervous, and I'm curious how other LA buyers would view this situation.

From what we've been able to gather:

• Public records show the home as a 2 bed / 1 bath, approximately 1,038 sq ft.
• The current listing is being marketed as a 3 bed / 2 bath, approximately 1,300+ sq ft.
• The flippers purchased the home earlier this year.
• The second bathroom appears to have been added during the flip.
• There are no permits for the bathroom addition.
• The flippers also updated electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems, but as far as we can tell, none of that work was permitted either.
• The listing agent has stated that licensed contractors performed the work, but hasn't provided permits.
• We were also told that the current square footage is based on an estimate rather than an official measurement.

My concern isn't necessarily the quality of the work (we'd obviously get inspections), but the fact that the home's current configuration doesn't seem to match public records. Since we'd like to do future improvements the right way and pull permits when needed, I'm worried about inheriting a situation that could create issues down the road.

Our real estate agent doesn't seem overly concerned and says this kind of thing is fairly common in Los Angeles. However, we're coming from an area where almost everything is permitted and documented, so this feels pretty foreign to us.

For those who have bought older homes in LA/Burbank:

• Is this a normal level of risk?
• Would the lack of permits for a recently added bathroom be a dealbreaker?
• Have any of you run into issues later when pulling permits for other projects on a property with unpermitted work?
• Would you walk away, negotiate, or proceed with extra due diligence?

I’m assuming this currently isn’t possible because AIOStreams depends on an internal scraper configuration to function, but I wanted to check whether anyone has successfully gotten this working.