Editorial: San Anselmo permitted change needs to happen

San Anselmo is moving toward eliminating a costly layer of bureaucratic review from local home sales.

It is joining other Marin municipalities in getting rid of the requirement that the town conduct a pre-sale inspection of homes before their sale can be completed.

The requirement has been a longstanding target of criticism from real estate agents and people buying and selling homes because of the cost and time delay it adds to the transaction.

In most communities, independent and documented inspections — the responsibility of buyers and sellers — are required to disclose building issues.

But San Anselmo has a decades-old requirement that the town conduct its own inspection, focusing on safety issues and unpermitted construction. That latter often requires payment to the town to resolve permit problems.

Buyers typically want pre-sale inspections so they are aware of any safety issues or needed repairs before a purchase is completed. It’s due-diligence for such a large investment. The work that’s needed is often negotiated in the final price.

Sometimes, sellers have inspections conducted in advance to answer questions potential buyers might have.

The cost of the town’s inspection was recently increased from $400 to $1,000, a significant increase that likely reignited complaints about the town’s requirement.

One critic called the requirement “cumbersome, expensive and overreaching.”

Another said the seller is often forced to make last-minute repairs to bring property up to code, which adds time and cost to the transaction.

These days, there may be times when a renovation-minded buyer will wind up tearing out that work after they acquire the house with plans to remodel it to meet their own needs.

San Anselmo is only one of six Marin cities – including Belvedere, Fairfax, Ross, San Rafael and Tiburon – that require presale inspections.

The county, for instance, has never required those inspections and Novato ended its requirement in 2022 because of the burden on sellers and cost to the city.

San Anselmo Mayor Steve Burdo said 90% of California cities and towns do not have resale inspection programs.

San Rafael’s inspection process was targeted in 2015 by then-Assemblymember Marc Levine, who ran into problems with the city when he was selling his Sun Valley neighborhood home and moving to Greenbrae. The city required Levine to get retroactive permits for unpermitted work, including some that had been made before he bought the house in 2004 and had been missed by the city inspection at that time.

He was able to get approval for a state audit of San Rafael’s and several other towns’ presale inspection programs.

It was a political overreach costing taxpayers nearly $300,000 for the review. Levine had a valid complaint. It just didn’t need a $300,000 state probe to address it.

As the San Anselmo Town Council proceeds, it should see if there is a history of the town’s inspections catching safety problems missed by private inspectors.

What’s going to be missed if the town gets out of the presale inspection process?

It should also look at the history of unpermitted work found in the town inspections and ask why property owners aren’t going through the hoops of getting that work signed off by the town.

Is it the added cost? The bureaucratic hassle? The time it takes? People don’t know town permits are required?

Those are all probable reasons, ones that should lead the town to review its process.

The primary focus should be discovering possible safety problems, not generating revenue.

Town officials defined the program as “consumer protection.”

But more than doubling the cost of its inspections to $1,000 should raise eyebrows.

At its recent meeting, council members raised questions about whether the town program is redundant and needed to protect buyers.

The discussion is healthy. In some cases, state requirements regarding inspections have changed since the town started its requirement more than 50 years ago.

Just because the requirement has been in place for so long doesn’t mean it is still needed.