[spycraft]

Our village (here in the USA) is pretty strict about the inspections. Each deck has to have 3 inspections (holes, framing, final).

If you build without a permit, the village will not allow you to sell the house (each sale has to have a village inspection) until you _tear down_ and redo the work with a permit.

So it's a lot more controlled than other places and they can enforce it by tying up the sale.

[cf100clunk]

Similarly, I've lived in low-lying, high moisture land areas where local authorities were extremely strict about people needing to use only approved footing plans. I've also lived in forested areas with strict codes and rules on fire mitigation and prevention, so tree and scrub proximity was a very serious concern.