Questioner

My challenge is, not necessarily with permits, but with the use of a property, can you help me with that?

Benjamin Sens

Yes

Questioner

So, for example, I’m trying to buy a farm that I can use for my exotic animals that I can have weddings there and also people come can go there for a zoo

Ben: Zoning

Questioner

Yup the zoning

Ben: Zoning verification

Questioner

And my neighbors already have zoning for their camels, pony rides and all that kind of stuff

Benjamin Sens

Just because they have it doesn’t mean you can get it.

Questioner

Exactly

Benjamin Sens I would get a zoning verification on the property.Because that’s what they’re that’s what they’re going to tell you. But But again, like you’re saying, just because the neighbors have it, I want to see if I could have it. Some people say oh, the neighbors have it. I thought I could have it.

I’m also really happy to be at Denny’s today, right here. I Denny’s, and I had a really good history. My grandfather who was a builder on Miami Beach, we always fight with, you know, a long time. And so we talked about he’s a builder. He says, Ben, why are you fixing building and code violations? You should be building your general contractor. I said, I love getting the deal done and providing resolutions and he always told me, you know, how he gave the fire marshal a big bag of cash in the 70s and 60s, and he thinks that’s how local government works today. And he’s used to go into Vegas and doing the wheel and dealing and I’m personally like, I told him, that’s not how local government works Grandpa Gill, and at that time, it was one one deal builders. He was the contractor. It was one guy giving him the loan. My dad was helping him sell the condominium.

And I want to do what I do on the other side of the counter. I want to do permit resolution and help people and help South Florida property owners and sellers and you know, everyone with these issues.

Hi everyone, this is Ben from BOSS Construction your South Florida permanent code compliance specialist. Just showing you how to properly tie a steel duck every three feet. This is what the inspectors want. They want solid steel and they want solid metal strap. I’m really sweating in this attic, waiting for this inspector. And this is what they don’t want. They don’t want this flex crap. They don’t want that crap. They want this to pass inspection. Just to give you an idea what that’s feeding right there. That’s an overhead exhaust for kitchen. Just showing you guys what’s happened in Boca Raton and all throughout South Florida. When we do these inspections, talk to you soon. Keep it safe guys. BOSS Construction Group, your South Florida permanent code compliance resolution team. Bye.

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Over here in beautiful North Miami. We see North Miami. Beautiful view on the 16th floor. Here on 135th Biscayne. We just closed out a kitchen and bathroom permit renovation, from a occupancy inspection. And we’re busy with commercial residential properties. Another case that we solved earlier this week was a $646,000 lien that we brought to the city’s attention that was not recorded properly. We got those fixed up, and we got everything cleaned and good to close. We’re about to head out over to Hallendale for a fence permit and a commercial property with 18 open permits and code violations. 18 open permits, so we have to figure out what is the resolution, how to solve these problems, guys, give me a call if you have any questions or need anything. Stay tuned for more. Thanks very much, guys. Bye.

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I spoke with a guy, Gary Bizwick over in North Miami. Gary tells me three years ago that they were looking for duplexes that were three plexes or four plexes. So they were looking for units that weren’t supposed to be there and multifamily or they were looking for like huge renovations done without permits. Now they’re looking for hot water heaters. Now they’re looking for air conditioners. So, again, this came into play around 2009, 08 or 09 when I was working in Miami Gardens when investors were coming in flipping homes and the residents and the business owners were getting pissed off. They were buying homes with severe problems.

Recently, Founder and President Benjamin Sens gave a presentation at the 136th Street property in South West Miami.

Transcript

Benjamin Sens

My name is Ben from boss construction group, I handle open permits and code violations. So what does that mean for agents? usually open. I mean, this house it was beautiful co two years ago, we spoke to the owner. What does this mean for agents, I don’t want things to get in the way of. I don’t want to open permits, code violations, liens, anything getting in the way of your closing, or your sellers or getting your deal done. So I used to be a city inspector and code officer. And I’m here to provide you guys with with a resource. And I’m, I’m here to provide you guys and Carlos is here with Atlantic building inspections. He’s also here to provide you with a solution with a solution. So we’ll talk about the solution after I present and will roughly go about 25 minutes, is that okay? So a long time ago, when I started out in City Inspector, I saw a lot of agents in the building department agents trying to handle open permits, code violations expired permits, whatever you want to call it. With the county with the city, the process is the same. It’s very time consuming. And when you invite the city on the property, sometimes they find more issues. So a lot of times I found agents trying to facilitate these things themselves. I got my general contractor license after being a city inspector and knowing the process. And a lot of times what I do is I you know, I make recommendations for agents or people selling their property. For example, we have a lot of things called non conforming uses, especially an older housing stock. what that might mean is a garage that you cannot convert or cannot legalize, someone built a bedroom in there. It might mean like I was in Broward and Southwestern inches that you have someone built an unpermitted structure on a three acre property. It didn’t meet finished floor elevation It didn’t meet the zoning requirements and setback for the town. So these, there’s some things we can’t permit. And I want to tell you that right away, and I want to tell you that before you go under contract, or before a buyer’s agent goes to the city and ask them, Hey, is this permitted use or Is this okay? every property probably, except for about this one has skeletons in their closet. So what I mean by that is there’s some things that haven’t been permitted unless it’s a new construction from the ground up. So an existing land use condition and existing zoning matter, something. So what I’m here to do is be a resource for the agents and help resolve those issues. I work mostly with sellers, agents and title companies usually bring me to the property owners, whether it’s residential, commercial, I’ve done industrial deals, commercial realtors, which we were talking about that they’ve done. A lot of what I’ve done several times over and 10 times over, a lot of times residential property owners, they’re caught off guard. Why are they caught off guard because service America did a water heater in the house, or when they’re out of business right now. They can’t they need to renew the permit. They can find them. Even if the contractor is still in business. Good luck getting them out. So a lot of times we have 1015 days before closing. If the agents not proactive, that’s when they usually get the lien search the title company. I want agents to pull lean searches or use the solution that Carlos is going to bring to you later in the presentation. proactively, which we can find out about open expired permits, code violations, liens, prior to the lien search, and we’re here to offer that resource to you as the agents as well. So there’s open permits, there’s expired

Benjamin Sens

permits a lot of residential agents and

Upcoming resolution education with Reliable Lien Search, here’s a preview, stay tuned for many live classes throughout South Florida IN JANUARY 2020.

Transcript

When we go over municipal lien searches, what can happen if you don’t get a municipal lien search, I think we already discussed that you lose the deal, you lose the transaction, you end up spending more money than you would have in the long run because you’re in a rush to close these things. And normally, if you’re reactive, what happens is you end up doing things, making decisions you wouldn’t have made wanted to make otherwise we’re spending more money to fix this electrical problem and a house. You know, particularly we talked about re occupancy inspections earlier in the presentation like in Miami Dade. What if I can correct an electrical violation with a licensed electrician rather than having the city come out, you have to pull a permit, wait for them, and then you’re looking at a huge costs. So we want to correct these deficiencies, the right way to protect the public to protect The seller to protect the transaction and make sure things are going well. This is an example of a reliable lien search that was done in Miami Gardens. Keep in mind, this property was a commercial. They had code enforcement violations, open permits. They also have under miscellaneous. There’s, again, this lien search company, they encompass everything and they’re very thorough, and they don’t miss everything and they’re here to support agents. They’re here to support property owners. They’re here to support title companies. It’s very important that you pull your municipal lien search and you pull it with a reliable company, or MLS or reliable lien search is phenomenal. And they encapsulate not only does the report look very pretty and organized and it’s easy to read. They’re very thorough a lot of the a lot of doing a lien search revolves around time. Reporting From the city, organizing data getting things done. So this lien search not only tells you my contact Miami Gardens, contact Public Works, contact Miami Dade code enforcement. It focuses on the actual violations. And while I’m working with reliable, we focus on giving you solutions. You guys were used to just getting Hey, I’m getting a problem here title company gives you your own, you know, a lien search, you have a problem. So we’re here not only to identify the problem or the deficiency, we’re here to give you a resolution or a solution.

So this is a property appraiser page from Miami Dade County. You see it addresses square footage, number of units, you go further into the property appraiser. It goes into different business license that were issued to the property within the zoning that it’s in. Very important. Some of the tenants of might not have local business tax receipts, they might have done illegal build outs. It’s very important to know these things. It’s very important some sellers do, some sellers don’t. And some of the tenants do things behind the sellers back, especially when we’re putting a property up for sale. We want to know if these deficiencies exist, so they don’t cause us a problem. prior to closing. This is a Miami Dade County letter that goes over special taxing district. A lot of lien search companies, they don’t even include this letter. If you’re in a special taxing district, they might not even know to ask, they might not give enough time to get the information. But this is very important for the sale and his title companies and underwriters have gotten, you know, a lot of problems. It’s because they’re not using reliable lien search companies. And what I mean by that is they’re not addressing all of the situation. This. This is also in

Upcoming resolution education with Reliable Lien Search, here’s a preview, stay tuned for many live classes throughout South Florida IN JANUARY 2020.

Transcription

Now that we’re done with residential, we’re going to move on to multifamily zoning verification. We’re going to touch on a little bit, which blends into all of our sections residential, commercial and industrial agents, real estate professionals do your due diligence. Don’t put, especially when you list a property, we don’t want to take pictures of violations. We don’t want to make misrepresentations on the MLS, which is the multiple listing service. In this case, this was a house in unincorporated Miami Dade County, just south of North Miami Beach. Again, everyone thought it was North Miami Beach or North Miami, but there are a lot of sections of unincorporated Dade County where you need to resort back to the county. Again just I say to people just because you see electrical service, our a lot of times water service. Not so much electrical but water service being a particular municipality doesn’t mean that it The properties within that municipality, just because you see North Miami Beach on the on the garbage cans doesn’t mean you’re within the city. So in this particular case on this street, we’re right on the border here. The agent went ahead and the agent wrote on the MLS, that you can rezone the property and put nine units. The reason why I brought this to your attention is because we did our zoning verification with Miami Dade County, making a couple calls. And we found out that you can only put four units on the property, maybe with a variance and keep in mind, there’s only two units existing on the property. So that makes a big difference with price. It makes a big difference with buyers expectations. It makes a big difference with representation on the MLS. So again, do your zoning verifications rely on a company like us for doing your land use zoning verifications, any type of occupancy license? cities like these, they’re starting to do licenses for a lot of people doing Airbnb, they’re looking for code enforcement issues. That way, they’re requesting them to get a license. Just as the hotels get a license, you want to operate your property as a hotel. So the city wants to come in there and make sure everything is code compliant. people doing property management, just your basic investors, your homeowners doing Airbnb on the side of their single family residents. Every situation is different. And we have to talk about that. So keep in mind, when you’re listing a property, you could give us a call at any time about any photographs, confirming the property appraiser updates, meaning if the property appraiser says it’s a three, two, and it’s a four, three in the field, a lot of these things we could correct. For example, in Miami Dade County, we’re correcting these using appraisals with a single family residence. So before this the city of Miami Gardens or any jurisdiction Going back to the occupancy as an inspection, we’re able to use an appraisal to go in the county and correct the bed and bath count really early in the game. And we’ll talk about early and being proactive really shortly to help save your transactions. Were able to help cure these problems before you list the property. Were able to help identify deficiencies before you list the property. I work with Ralph Megan. He’s an excellent Coldwell Banker agent all the time, he calls me for his re occupancy inspections in North Miami, in Miami Gardens. Again, these are things where the city’s coming on the property and they’re looking for deficiencies. So what if we can correct those deficiencies, the ones that are big and going to cause problems prior to the city coming out one o

This is part 1 of our presentation we do at Realtor events or any events interested in our permit and code violation resolution services.

Transcript

Hi everyone, this is Benjamin Sens from BOSS Construction your South Florida permitting and code compliance specialist coming to you today to show you some things we’ve been working on. This is for residents in South Florida. This is for people in the South Florida business community. And this is for real estate professionals. Here’s a little bit of background about myself. I used to be a city inspector in Miami Gardens and in western handling, permitting and code compliance issues. So I know the other side of the counter, I’m a general contractor, I have code enforcement certifications. My background is in urban planning. So I understand a lot about planning, zoning, code enforcement, basically anything having to do navigating with the city or the county, what we call the local jurisdictions, people having authority over businesses and building permits and any type of licensing. My background also is in real estate. So for you real estate professionals out there I understand very well the hardships that sellers face when trying to cure these violations, things they already paid someone else to do things they inherited from a couple properties, a couple property owners ago and those we will go over. We’re going to handle some common permitting and code violations today, our residential or commercial or industrial properties, we’re going to go over some best practices. And we’re going to go over some things that you could do as a property owner or real estate professional, on how to prevent things from happening last minute when you’re closing on your property and give you good information on when you’re working with a contractor. Hopefully, someone who’s licensed and insured, how to make sure that they’re doing the right thing and get your project done right.

So they don’t you know, not finish

your property end up leaning the property or having any issues on on the residential side. We’re going to go over some additions. This is our first one from Biscayne Park, which is a small jurisdiction out of North Miami. This is a particular city that has something called re occupancy inspections. And it’s not a city, it’s a village because that’s what they call it like the town of Davy, the village of Biscayne Park. Okay, so this is a small jurisdiction in in near the city of North Miami, and North Eastern Miami Dade County, again, a lot of old housing stock, a lot of problems going on within these particular houses where people have renovated them without permits. That’s something that we get into. And also people have inherited violations from other property owners. This particular violation where you see the staircase, six months before the property was being sold, the owners decided who were absentee owners from the west coast of the United States to go ahead and renovate the entire property. So what happened Was code enforcement cited them for building and bathroom for building permit kitchen and bathroom renovations. Other interior remodeling, keep in mind guys, everything basically needs a permit, even if it’s a single family residence. Now you guys can act as your own contractor. But the authority having jurisdiction, in this case, Biscayne Park, they want to come out to make sure the electrical, the plumbing, everything is done to code. This is a particular case where we have the kitchen on the left side. And on the right side where you see this picture, there’s a staircase, why do I bring the staircase to you? Because it’s very important that when we bring the city or the building department into the property, that everything else meet compliance or they might not close that

Ben: Hi this is Ben from boss construction I’m over here to an amazing listing over in Southwest 18551 Southwest 136 Street. Maredi invited me over here from the CB Pine Crest office amazing 10,000 square foot home on five acres. Beautiful house. I’m over here doing a presentation today at the home for open permits and code violations. Using just just the metal door the metal roof the concrete structure, the gentleman who built the homeworks with some amazing word features high vaulted ceilings, concrete roof Dream House path without bag I mean the guy built the whole wood shop another 2000 square foot prefab building, beautiful basket woveen floors. Really nice and it’s done with permits.

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