We're in the midst of rebuilding our old (cedar) deck and replacing with composite. The decking itself is done, as are the stairs from the top level to the lower level, but we haven't finished the railing, so we haven't had our final inspection from the city yet.
I'd love to get my house reassessed since home prices have risen dramatically in my area since I bought, and I should be able to get my PMI cancelled based on the assessment.
How big of a problem is a deck that isn't up to code yet? We did pull permits for the construction with the city. FWIW, we have about 25K of wiggle room between our realtor's estimate of what we'd assess at and what we need in order to have PMI cancelled.
Best Answer
That should not be a problem at all, particularly since your construction is in process with a permit. The most likely effect would be a lowering of the assessment based on an estimate of what it would take to get it up to code if you stopped construction at this stage, and railing plus finishing touches shouldn't add all that much.
Technically you can even sell a house that not only fails code in a few items but is even unable to be occupied (e.g. major plumbing problems or structurally unsafe) though obviously an assessment in such a case would be quite a bit lower. An assessment is not a code review (neither is a home inspection which gets into far more detail than an assessment), it is just a professional estimate of value based on comparable homes and the general attributes of your home.