As Nancy Roy and her husband, John Roy, try to sell their East Wareham home and move to a retirement community, the couple is encountering frustration as Building Commissioner Paul Turner applied state building codes in ways that Nancy Roy called “arbitrary and capricious.” 

“We are caught in a conundrum because of this particular level of enforcement instituted,” Roy said.

She said the family has lost at least one sale and predicted that many more homeowners are likely to become victims of an April 29 memo regarding “open” building permits issued by Turner. 

Property owners and contractors take out building permits for any construction, demolition or alteration work of structures. Permits are marked as “open” before and during construction and are “closed” when the town’s Department of Inspectional Services is notified of the project’s completion and then inspects and signs off on the building permit. 

The problematic building permits are often opened for smaller projects, taken out years ago, and did not get an official sign-off before they expired 180 days after work ended. There are hundreds of expired open building permits on properties in Wareham.

Open permits can look like a liability for buyers, as they can appear to be unresolved projects or problems with a property. And according to Turner, there’s no way for a property to close out these expired building permits.

In an April 29 memo posted to the town website and the Office of Inspectional services window, Turner wrote that his department would not inspect any work from an expired open building permit, leaving the permits showing in town records as “open” forever.

For the Roys, a prospective buyer’s lender would not sign off on a mortgage because of an open 2015 permit for installation of a new water heater. The heater was installed by a licensed plumber and has functioned properly since 2015, Roy said. According to Roy, her plumber never closed out the permit with the town.

“I understand issues that this may cause with lenders, potential buyers and insurance companies,” Turner wrote in an email. “[The April 29 memo] was produced to educate people that the building department cannot, by right, close out long expired permits without taking responsibility for the action.”

In an email to Nancy Roy, Turner wrote that she had two possible solutions to her problem: Get a licensed plumber to take on all liability associated with the water heater since its installation date, or to have the water heater replaced after opening new permits.

Roy chose to work with her plumber to ensure that the water heater was functioning properly and opened a new permit. She said that her plumber determined the appliance was “viable,” and the new permit has since been inspected and closed out by the town.

While the options might give confidence to the new buyer that they were not buying a potentially problematic heater, neither of the options available to Roy would have closed the previously expired permit associated with Roy’s property. 

Even with the water heater inspected and the new building permit closed, the expired building permit from 2015 is still attached to Roy’s property, left as “open.”

According to Turner, who has led the town’s Department of Inspectional Services since 2022, the department is enforcing what is required by Massachusetts building code.

However, not all towns handle open permits as Turner is handling them.

“While I understand the enforcement of the regulation, it’s not that they can’t close [expired open building permits],” Roy said. “They won’t.”

Middleboro Building Commissioner Robert Whalen said his department will work with residents to close out open and expired building permits as long as they were the ones who opened the permit. 

Whalen said he tries to make the process “as easy as possible” for Middleboro homeowners.

Marc Leblanc, a managing broker at Cape Coastal Sotheby’s International Realty, has sold properties in Marion, Bourne and Wareham and is the former chair of the Marion Zoning Board of Appeals. 

Only in Wareham has Leblanc ever faced an issue with expired open building permits that the town would not inspect, he said. 

“This is the first time I’ve ever had a town stick their heels in the ground and not want to try and make it right for the homeowner,” he said.

Leblanc said that open permits can “stigmatize” a property to home buyers.

The Massachusetts Board of Building Regulations and Standards, which monitors state building codes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wareham’s stance to not inspect open and expired building permits.

According to Turner, his April 29 memo cites sections of the state building code that “many people are unaware of.” 

“This department was expending great amounts of its most valuable resource, time, communicating the regulations verbally to contractors, homeowners, home buyers, along with their respective attorneys, real-estate agents and lenders who struggled to understand the regulations,” Turner said.

Wareham-based realtor Ralph Grassia said he “can’t fault” the town’s close enforcement of the state building code.

However, Grassia said Turner “may not have really thought about the implications of [the code] … It could be a real problem for everybody, and that’s not good.”

According to Turner, he has “implemented policies that help the department function efficiently to serve the general public.”

Still, despite issues with expired building permits on her property, Roy has not lost hope in selling her home. As of Monday, June 24 she said that her house has a pending sale.