When I am sitting in a listing appointment and I ask the question, “Did you pull a permit for this?”, I often get shifty eyes and a . . .”well no, I did not want to spend the money on that”. 
I completely understand the thought behind wanting to save the money while you are spending a ton to get your project done and, believe me, I have done many a house project! There are a few reasons why I would say to pull a permit.
- If you are doing the work yourself and you are not a contractor, you need the permit process to catch things you many not do quite right according to code. The code is reviewed and updated continuously so if you are not constantly in the trades – you will not know every single update and you will most likely miss something.
2. If you hire a contractor that is doing work “on the side” for you. You need to make sure you pull the permit yourself. If you have no 3rd party inspector or licensed individual checking off on the work completed, you don’t have anyone that is taking liability for the work besides yourself. When it comes time to sell, the inspector that is working for the Buyer will inspect the house and raise red flags on small little items that would have most likely been caught by a city inspector. (I am well aware that contractors and inspectors don’t always see things the same way)
3. If you get in the middle of a transaction that involves a purchase agreement for your home and you have not taken the proper steps to insure that your project was done according to code, you will pay more for those fixes when you sell your home than you would have if you would have done a complete job of the project in the first place. Buyers like documentation for work that was completed. It makes everyone feel more comfortable moving forward without hesitation knowing everything was checked out.