Building inspection by the city before moving in?

That is what the law states, called Building Regulations NRW 2018, Paragraph 84

Thank you.

Maybe then some municipalities just don't take it so seriously.

I never experienced anything like that. It seems that not every community handles it that way.

Back then, no one from the office came by for us

Maybe some municipalities just don’t take it that seriously.

The staffing level (and possibly also the company car pool) may persuade a building authority not necessarily to trigger an inspection upon a completion report or to economically decide when spot checks are considered sufficient. The focus is on not letting binding regulations regarding fire protection and accident prevention lapse into recommendations that are all too easily disregarded, defending living rooms at the neighboring boundary, and the like. It is also not uncommon to raise the knee wall by a "no one will notice" row of stones – although not as often as privacy fences with growth hormones.

Hi! We live in northern NRW and moved in almost two years ago. At some point, a few months after moving in, a man from the building authority showed up unannounced at the door and asked if he could do the final inspection. However, he only looked at the escape route from the upper floor and criticized that a step in front of the escape window was missing (which we had omitted because it looked so stupid). I then retrofitted the step and emailed a photo to the building authority. Shortly afterwards, a letter with a stamp arrived and that was it… Nothing to worry about. The fact that we had already been living there didn’t interest him at all.