[Mears]

“We don’t need permits for anything, even a house.”

—

That comment made me do a double-take.

I live in Eastern MA-—regulation hell.

A friend of mine had a stone patio in front of a house she had lived in for 30 years.

She wanted to tear up the patio and build a deck over the same area.

The city said no because it was a “structure” and there wasn’t enough set-back from the property line.

She fought it-—and lost.

.

[Mr. Douglas]

It’s one of the reasons I moved here. That, and the annual property taxes on my 20 acre property adjacent to my original 12 acres - including two streams, a 40 x 60 barn and a natural well, are the price of a loaded family sized pizza.

[Steve_Seattle]

"She wanted to tear up the patio and build a deck over the same area."

I live just north of Seattle, and the same thing happened to an adult home in my neighborhood. They built a ground level wooden deck in their front yard, so the residents could sit outdoors in nice weather, and the city made them tear it down for some reason. It appeared to be well off the property line.

A few years earlier, the city allowed the property behind me to be subdivided, and the back wall of one of the houses is only about six feet from my property line. The previous house was about fifty feet from the property line. Go figure.

[Kay Ludlow]

That's how it is here in central PA too. you can build a deck without a BUILDING permit, if none of it is more than 20” above ground. You still have to have a zoning permit though, so they know you are only putting it where you are allowed. Plus, it gives them a record of everything. The state is creating a state-wide GIS map, so they can know where everything is on their property, because that's how they interpret being a Commonwealth - it's all really theirs and we are just allowed to use it, when they approve.

[The Westerner]

My dad was a builder out west in the post-WWII boom who gave up on it after the regulations ate into his profits. Not just regs. but the *time* spent to gain permissions could be used to make money elsewhere. He explained that the sameness in buildings is caused by these regs. To maintain profitability, developers stick to one paint color and shape. Truly sad esthetically.