A year and a half ago, my wife and I bought a small home a couple of blocks away from ours for my daughter, son-in-law and grandson to live in so that we could see our grandchild nearly every day. At the time of purchase, the disclosure statement revealed that the largest room in this small home was a non-permitted room. That didn't bother me as I do some construction and would get it permitted. What wasn't disclosed and in fact was specifically answered falsely was that there were no legal actions against the house when the City Attorney's office had filed a lawsuit against the previous owners regarding that room. We initiated a lawsuit and in mediation the previous owner and the selling brokeridge agreed to reimburse us a very significant amount. Building and Safety wants us to tear down this 40 year old room because the setback isn't enough to meet zoning standards and because there were never permits issued. I'm willing to rebuild with permits but the zoning issue prevents that. We are filing a variance application to try and circumvent the setback requirement and the application alone is approximately $10,000.00 and we've been told that we probably have at best a 50/50 chance of prevailing.
Good luck, I hope you can get your garage permitted and are allowed to keep it standing. I doubt we'll be able to keep ours.