The first thing that happens is paperwork
Virginia's code writes the sequence down. Section 115.2 says that where work has gone in with no permit, the notice of violation goes to the responsible party, names the code section it rests on, directs the correction, and sets "a reasonable time period" for that correction to happen in. The building official may ask the locality's legal counsel to start legal proceedings once somebody fails to comply with that notice, or, compliance notwithstanding, once a person has been served three or more notices in one calendar year for starting work without a required permit. There is more on how Virginia runs a permit on its own page.
If somebody catches it while the forms are still up, the tool is a stop work order. Virginia's Section 114.1 requires it in writing, identifying the work to be stopped and stating the conditions under which the work may resume. Section 114.2 limits the order to the work it names, and lets other work on the building continue as long as it does not conceal what the order covers.
North Carolina runs the same shape with different numbers and one sharper edge. G.S. 160D-404(b) requires the order in writing, with the reasons and the conditions for resuming, and ends: "Violation of a stop work order shall constitute a Class 1 misdemeanor." Virginia's own stop work order sections name no separate penalty for working through one. So in North Carolina the cheapest thing to do when an order is taped to the forms is stop. Under G.S. 160D-1114(a) there are five days to appeal a Building Code stop order to the State Fire Marshal, and while that appeal is pending, "no further work shall take place in violation of a stop order."
The part that costs money is the inspection that never happened
For concrete, the permit and the inspection are the same subject. Virginia's Section 113.3 sets out the minimum inspections a building official makes where they apply to the construction or the permit, and two of the first three are written around placing concrete: the footing excavation with its reinforcement material, looked at before any concrete is placed, and the preparatory work, looked at before any concrete is placed. Those two are not even consecutive. Foundation systems sit between them as item 2.
Section 113.1 then supplies the consequence in a single line: a building or structure "may be inspected at any time before completion and shall not be deemed in compliance until approved by the inspecting authority." The same USBC Section 113.1 lets an inspection be waived where the construction cost is less than $2,500, which is a threshold on what the work costs and has nothing to do with the first offense fine further down this page, and even that waiver sits in the discretion of the inspecting authority rather than happening automatically.
So the honest picture on a footing is not dramatic and it is not cheap either. Pour without the inspection and the approval Section 113.1 waits on has not happened, so the record of approvals that Section 113.6 has the building official keep holds none for that footing. What that gap is worth later, to a buyer, a lender or an appraiser, is not settled by any document we could open, and we are not going to invent a figure for it. On a footing, get the inspection the permit calls for before any concrete goes in.
Two things people repeat that the statutes will not carry
The first is that building without a permit in Virginia is a Class 1 misdemeanor carrying twelve months in jail. It is a misdemeanor, and the rest of that sentence is wrong. Code of Virginia section 36-106 prescribes its own punishment, and under its subsection A a first offense is "punished by a fine of not more than $2,500." Virginia's default rule at section 18.2-12 reaches only "A misdemeanor for which no punishment or no maximum punishment is prescribed by statute," and section 36-106 prescribes both in detail, so the default never engages. Where the violation is still uncorrected at conviction, subsection A has the court "order the violator to abate or remedy the violation in order to comply with the Code," normally within six months, and "Each day during which the violation continues after the court-ordered abatement period has ended shall constitute a separate offense." Jail in subsection A comes at a third or subsequent offense within ten years, and even there it is "confinement in jail for not more than 10 days," while subsections B and C, written for certain dwellings, carry their own terms, and both can mean jail for a second offense.
The second is that an inspector can make you break out a slab to see what is underneath it. Nothing found in Virginia's code grants an inspector that power. Its administrative provisions were read section by section for words like uncover and expose, and the language people half remember belongs to the model administrative chapter, which Virginia does not adopt at all. Virginia's inspection rules work before concealment instead: Section 113.6 has defects corrected and looked at again before any work goes on that would conceal them. That is an absence rather than a provision forbidding the order, so what follows an uninspected pour is a conversation with the building official, not a rule anyone can quote you. Removal does appear in Section 115.3, but as legal proceedings the locality's attorney brings once a notice of violation has gone uncorrected, and North Carolina's demolition power is tied to a building being declared unsafe rather than to a missing permit.
North Carolina counts the offense differently from Virginia, and it counts it twice. Failing to secure the permit is a Class 1 misdemeanor under G.S. 160D-1110(i). Violating the Building Code itself is a Class 3 misdemeanor under G.S. 143-138(h), where a violator "shall upon conviction only be liable to a fine, not to exceed fifty dollars ($50.00), for each offense," with each 30 days counting as a separate offense. Which one a prosecutor around here would actually charge is not settled by any public document, so we will not predict it. And that Class 1 label only reaches work a permit was required for to begin with. G.S. 160D-1110(c) settles that threshold question first. It takes work costing $40,000 or less out of the permit requirement only where that work is "performed in accordance with the current edition of the North Carolina State Building Code" in a single-family residence, a farm building or a commercial building, and it then lists kinds of work the exclusion does not cover at any price. The page on the two states takes that exclusion apart. This one only notes that it sits in front of the offense, so a small job done to that code may not reach the Class 1 offense at all.
The after the fact fee is a county number with a date on it
Virginia's building code contains no penalty fee at all. Section 107 is the whole of the fee provision, it authorizes fees to defray the cost of enforcing the code, and apart from the separate levy in Section 107.2 it ring fences that money to the local building department. So where a Virginia county does charge extra for unpermitted work, the charge comes out of that county's own ordinance or fee schedule, never out of the state code.
Patrick and Grayson counties each publish one. Both figures only mean something with their dates attached. Patrick County's building ordinance charges a pre-inspection fee of $250.00 to anyone who starts construction without first obtaining a required building permit, payable before a permit issues for a project already completed or in progress; the PDF the county publishes was created in December 2021 and prints no adoption date on its face. Grayson County's fee schedule, as the county published it as of June 2025, charges anyone who begins a project without a required building permit a pre-inspection fee set at $60.00 or at 20 percent of the project's permit, on top of the permit fee itself. Carroll County's fee schedule carries no line of that kind anywhere on it.
On the North Carolina side, Surry County's inspection fee list, which reads on its face effective July 1, 2026, carries a line for a working without a permit fee at double the cost of the permit. Wilkes County's posted permit fee sheet lists a triple building permit fee for anyone caught building without a building permit, and that document was created in 2010 and carries a 2010 effective note, so it may well have been superseded without anybody swapping the link. Fee sheets go stale faster than anything else on a county website. Call the department before you treat any of these as current. Our North Carolina permits page carries the departments.
Selling it later, and the clocks in Virginia's code
The two states are near opposites on disclosure. In the Virginia Residential Property Disclosure Act, section 55.1-703 is headed "Required disclosures for buyer to beware; buyer to exercise necessary due diligence," and each item on its list is a no representations item, covering lot lines, flood hazard areas, easements, wastewater systems and the like. Permits are not among them. That is not the whole Act, though. Section 55.1-706 requires a written disclosure to a prospective purchaser where the owner has actual knowledge of "any pending enforcement actions pursuant to the Uniform Statewide Building Code" that "affect the safe, decent, sanitary living conditions of the property of which the owner has been notified in writing by the locality," or of a pending zoning violation that has not been abated or remedied within the time set in the locality's written notice of violation or by a court. Section 55.1-702(B) separately has the builder of a new dwelling "disclose in writing to the purchaser all known material defects that would constitute a violation of any applicable building code." Whether any of that reaches a slab poured without a permit is a question for a real estate attorney before the house is listed.
North Carolina asks the question by name. The state Real Estate Commission's residential disclosure form, at question E3, asks whether the property is "in violation of any building codes (including the failure to obtain required permits for room additions or other changes/improvements)." The form's instructions allow a response of Yes, No, No Representation or Not Applicable, and G.S. 47E-4(c) says an owner who makes no representations "has no duty to disclose those conditions." So the question gets asked, and it can also be formally declined.
Time is written into the Virginia side as well. Under Section 115.2.1, a violation discovered more than two years after the certificate of occupancy or the date of initial occupancy, whichever came later, or more than two years after the approved final inspection of an alteration or renovation, draws a notice of violation only on advice from the locality's legal counsel that action may be taken to compel correction. Code of Virginia section 19.2-8 puts a second clock on prosecution under section 36-106: it has to begin within one year of the building official discovering the offense, and only where that discovery comes within two years of initial occupancy or use after construction, or of the certificate of use and occupancy, whichever is later. How either clock reads against a slab that never had a permit or a final inspection is a question for an attorney.