Is anyone else as aggravated as I am with St. Louis County municipalities and St. Louis City demanding that sellers make corrections/modifications/repairs to their home that either A) existed when they bought their house or B) could have been pointed out while the seller lives there and taken care of over time?

Case in point:  The City of Rock Hill in the County of St. Louis, Missouri. 

In the last few years, sellers in this city have been forced to spend thousands of dollars to retrofit their homes either at the whim of the inspector, or because Rock Hill thinks it's their job to protect people from stupidity.  A recent home re-occupancy inspection for a home in this city noted several “violations” and required fixes of said “violations”. Such requirements included adding a light fixture to the basement stairwell where one already exists, adding balusters to the stairwell so a child cannot fall off, dry walling the interior of a basement garage and building a concrete stoop for fire-safety, and installing a railing or bushes as a barrier to falling off a 5-foot retaining wall. 

Further review by the seller of the city’s International Property Maintenance Code revealed that none of the described “violations” were really violations at all! The issues are not stated in the maintenance code, and therefore the seller has wisely chosen to appeal the predications with the city.

Although conditions at this home have been this way for 50-60 years, now that a seller wants to move, the city decides it's time to make this property "safe".  It makes me wonder, if these issues are so inherently critical to ensuring an occupant’s safety, why didn't the city choose to take action to protect the current owner’s safety before now?

Just recently, in another comparable circumstance, the seller of a house in Webster Groves was forced to dead-wood her 40 year old oak tree in the front yard at a cost of several hundred dollars. Sure, I suppose a branch could have been ripped from the trunk in a storm and possibly hit a car driving by…but why didn't the city notice the dead branches of her tree while driving through her neighborhood in the last 12 months? Why does this become an issue only now?

If these inspectors are REALLY concerned about safety issues in the neighborhood, why aren't they routinely driving through looking for how an average citizen might be harmed simply by living in their community? (And caulking the bathtub?  How is that a safety/health violation that requires compliance before an Occupancy Permit will be issued?  Yes, that came up on a Webster inspection, also.)

I’m just going to say it…I'm weary of the government acting as my protector and treating us as if we are all helpless victims. Does the government serve a place in our society for protecting the common good? Absolutely. Have recent circumstances shown an unhealthy extension of their influence and involvement in the home sale process? I believe so.

The truth is that the tougher these supposed "code violations" become, the more agents will be unwilling to extol the qualities of living in that community, knowing the kind of repairs and modifications the buyer-turned-seller will have to do…and decreasing the ease or motivation for moving real estate, particularly in the current market, serves no one.

Next up, Laclede Gas predications, Cap and Trade and the new Transfer Tax.