HGTV flippers hit with building violations

This happened in my town as well - someone who grew up here and ended up having a show on HGTV did some demo work or something like that without permits. Not the same people you mentioned, but it seems to be an unfortunate trend.

I'm sensing an opportunity for a new HGTV reality series here..."Building Department Nightmares" or something (lol).

In my state, there is a law stating that (paraphrased) "owners in the business of development and construction are only allowed to do one flip every two years". another jurisdiction had one of the HGTV shows come in and try to do an entire season of shows and the building official stopped them. Ultimately the building official lost the court battle because HGTV is not in the business of development and construction; they are in the business of entertainment. So a stupid loophole allowed this lady to continue doing her thing, flipping dozens of houses with questionable quality.

A local city had Extreme Home Makeover come and renovate a home. The City required the production company to pay for an inspector to be onsite 24/7 while work was being done. City and contract inspectors were provided during the project.

So I have worked with a few of these over the years and some have been good, and some bad. They work on a super accelerated schedule which always poses problems. What I did, was have inspectors onsite, paid for by the production company, so that they could work at the productions speed. We would also back into all necessary permits as we went along so that we would start with a general permit, then add plumbing, electrical, structural or whatever else was needed at the end to make the structure legal again. Having someone onsite helped smooth out so many of the problems.

Now, I was always very clear with them up front that we would do everything we needed to do to facilitate their filming schedule, but that they would do everything possible to satisfy the jurisdictions needs. Having those discussions up front helped tremendously and outlined the expectations.