Mismanagement of any project, business, organization, or property can lead to trouble, and in some cases major fines. In this case an international traveler entrusted her local home to a local realtor who also served as the property manager. The goal was to have the local realtor work directly with the homeowner’s son to make sure the property was maintained, and for the collection of rents.
Unfortunately, due to neglect, and poor management, the property received two major violations. One violation issued was for a Stop Work Order (SWO) and the second issued was for an Unsafe Building (UB). These are two major violations, that not only require numerous steps to return the property to original structure that’s considered code compliant, but also come with fines, and major payouts to professional architects, engineers, tradesmen, contractors, and for the issuance of municipal permits, and code inspections.
Our team was called in to help with the expediting and project management. We immediately consulted with the borough office to research the property, and get an understanding of which fees were required, paid, and defaulted on. This step allowed us to determine what could be appealed, and helped with putting together a project plan, with budget, and timeline to share with the homeowner. Once we had the project plan for the expediting in place, we started tackling the UB violation so we could get the building back code compliant. Once we were able to get the violation dismissed we then had to facilitate having the lis pendens cancelled, and in the interim work on getting everything verified so we could obtain the cancellation filed in the court house.
Our next step was to start working on the removal of the SWO which involved many moving parts. We knew that 1) the SWO would require the coordination of many trades, and immediately began to coordinate the team for the homeowner, her son, and realtor and property manager to vet before agreeing to utilize their services, 2) that the homeowner would need to have a hefty budget to retain the trades and pay for the municipal sign-offs and 3) that we would have to negotiate a fine reduction and resolution from $3,361 down to $697 since our homeowner had a tight budget.
Additionally, we made sure that all of the trades presented by our team to the homeowner’s team were licensed, and insured, and were able to meet the standards of the borough offices issuing the sign-offs. Our first conversation was with the architect, to discuss the specifics of how we would work together to facilitate the project. We decided to open up a new job application and consider it an Alt 2 project which isn’t as involved as a major alternation. Our next step was to start the paperwork involved for the architect to complete, and thereafter, we worked with each trade, coordinated every inspection until we were able to obtain the final sign-offs for permits, and the job.
If you have any questions or would like to hire a hassle–free professional firm to facilitate this process for you, All Boro On-Call Business + Home Center is always available at (917) 805-9868.
