Urgent permit help
Urgent Permit Rescue
Denied permit. Stop work order. Expired permit. A closing held up by something a previous owner did. These are the calls we take most, and they are all fixable — but every one of them gets more expensive the longer it sits.
Answered 7 days, day or night. Se habla español. Most situations can be assessed on the first call.
Find your situation
Six problems make up almost everything that comes through this page. Start with the one that matches.
What happens when you call
You get a person, and you get an assessment on that first call rather than a callback in three days. We will ask for the address, the permit number if there is one, and whatever paperwork you were handed — the correction letter, the stop work order, the notice of violation, the title commitment.
From that we can usually tell you three things immediately: which jurisdiction actually controls this, what category of problem it is, and roughly what the path out looks like.
Send us the actual document. A photo of the red tag, the PDF of the correction letter, the notice with the case number. Nine times out of ten the answer is written on it in language that means something to us and nothing to anybody else.
Why these get worse when they sit
Almost every problem on this page has a clock attached to it. Code enforcement fines accrue daily. Hearing dates arrive whether or not you have responded. Closings have contractual deadlines and extensions cost real money or kill the deal. Expired permits get harder to reinstate the longer they sit, and at some point the department stops offering reinstatement at all and you are filing fresh.
None of these fix themselves, and waiting narrows the options rather than widening them. That is the whole argument for calling now instead of Monday.
What we can and cannot promise
We can promise you a straight assessment, fast, from people who file in these jurisdictions constantly and have seen your situation before. We can promise the work gets done by one firm rather than passed between an engineer, a drafter, an expediter and a contractor who all blame each other.
We cannot promise a jurisdiction will approve anything, and we cannot promise a timeline that a building department controls. Anyone who does is selling you something. What we can do is stop the file sitting in a queue nobody is watching, and make sure that when the department asks for something, it is answered the same week rather than the next month.
The usual sequence
- Triage — we establish which department controls it, what has actually been issued against the property, and what the real deadline is.
- Records pull — we find out what the jurisdiction has on file, which is frequently not what anyone believed.
- Scope — you get a written path, a flat professional fee and an honest statement of what is unknown.
- Documentation — as-builts, engineering, sealed letters or a corrected plan set, whatever the department needs.
- Filing and follow-through — submitted, tracked, comments answered, inspections scheduled, permit closed.
Most of what makes this work is unglamorous: someone whose actual job is to watch the file and pick up the phone when it stalls.
Questions people ask on the first call
How fast can you actually respond?
We answer the phone 7 days, day or night, and respond to form submissions within 30 minutes. On genuine emergencies — a stop work order, a closing this week — triage happens on the first call.
Can you get a stop work order lifted?
We can identify exactly what the issuing department requires to lift it and produce that as fast as it can be produced. Whether and when it is lifted is the jurisdiction’s decision, not ours, and we will not pretend otherwise.
I did not do the work. It was the previous owner.
Very common, particularly at closing. The obligation unfortunately attaches to the property rather than to whoever did it. The good news is the path to resolving it is the same and it does not require finding the original contractor.
Will this cost me a fortune?
The professional fee is flat and stated in writing before we start. Government fees, including any penalty multipliers on after-the-fact permits, are passed through at cost. We will give you the realistic range on the first call, including when the honest answer is that it is expensive.
Can you take over a file another firm started?
Yes, routinely. Send us whatever exists. We will tell you what is salvageable and what needs redoing, and we will not bill you for redoing something that did not need it.
Send us the paperwork
Address, permit or case number, and what you were handed. We respond within 30 minutes, day or night.
Services this usually turns into
After-the-Fact & Expired Permits
The service behind most of what is on this page — legalising work and closing permits that lapsed.
See the serviceCode Compliance & Violations
Notices of violation, enforcement hearings and fines that are already running.
See the serviceAs-Built Drawings
Field measurement and drawings for work that exists but was never documented.
See the serviceRealtor & Closing Support
When the problem is a closing date rather than a construction schedule.
See the serviceReady to get your permit moving?
One call tells you which jurisdiction controls your project, what it will take, and what it will cost. Most of the time we can scope it on the phone.