The Order You Get Here Is Not the Harmless One
Owners in this part of the city work out fairly quickly that the fifty per cent test is unlikely to catch them, because the values are strong enough that repair cost stays well under the threshold. That much is usually right.
What follows is usually wrong. An order requiring repair within a specified time must state that failure to make timely repairs as directed will make the dwelling subject to the issuance of an unfit order. The repair branch is not the branch where nothing happens; it is the branch with a deadline. The full position is on our page covering the fifty per cent determination.
What Does Timely Mean in Practice?
What Happens If the Date Passes
Two consequences worth understanding before rather than after.
The first is that the dwelling becomes subject to an unfit order, which moves the file onto the track the strong values were protecting you from. The second is financial: where the housing inspector causes repairs, alterations or improvements to be carried out because the owner did not, the cost is a lien against the real property, filed and enforced as the statutes provide.
Would a City Really Do the Work Itself?
We publish no enforcement determinations, order deadlines or values for individual north Raleigh properties. The city's housing office holds the first two and local sale evidence the third.
Strong Values Change the Stakes, Not the Process
Worth separating carefully. High value keeps the fraction low, which keeps you on the repair branch. It does nothing to slow the process, remove the deadline or prevent a lien.
If anything it raises the stakes, because a lien or an unfit order attaches to a more valuable asset. The protection here is arithmetic rather than procedural, and arithmetic only protects one of the two things owners assume it protects.
Which Makes Engagement Cheap Insurance
Responding to correspondence, telling the office what is happening with a claim, and showing that work is being arranged all cost nothing and all sit within the statutory expectation that an owner be given a reasonable opportunity to bring a dwelling into conformity.
An owner in this position who engages is very unlikely to end up anywhere unpleasant. One who goes quiet for eight months on the assumption that their postcode protects them is relying on the wrong half of the statute.
And Repairing Is Usually the Better Answer Anyway
Where a finished house is worth a great deal, the cost of repair is a smaller proportion of it, and an owner with a repairable building is usually better off repairing than accepting any cash offer. That is the honest position on much of this stock.
It also happens to be the route that satisfies the order. We would rather say that at the start than negotiate toward a figure that was never going to be competitive.
North Raleigh in Context
Where the arithmetic runs against owners instead, see our page about southeast Raleigh. Where a designation opens a further route, see our page for downtown Raleigh and Oakwood.
The Sections Behind the Deadline
Section 160D-1203 of Chapter 160D sets both branches: repair within a specified time, or demolition within 90 days where repair cannot be done at a cost not exceeding 50 per cent of the dwelling's then current value.
Section 160D-1203(6) adds the 1 year abandonment provision, and an ordinance adopted under the section is recorded with the register of deeds and indexed in the owner's name.
North Raleigh Questions
Am I Safe Because of My Values?
Safe from the demolition branch, largely. Not from the deadline on a repair order or from a lien for work done in your place.
My Claim Is Taking Longer Than the Order Allows.
Then say so to the office rather than letting the date pass quietly. Engagement is what the statutory protection is built around.
Will You Buy in North Raleigh?
Yes, and on this stock we will often tell you repairing is worth more than any offer we can make.