<prompt> Human: Is this something that we could potentially be punished for if its found out? We tried to get a HELOC and the house was appraised low - a lot lower than we were assuming. I looked at the printout they gave us at the bank, and I saw that it was only reporting 1950 sq ft and our house is almost twice that. This is not something that we had anything to do with, we bought the house 4 years ago and the previous owners built the house themselves. We obviously dont want to pay back taxes or something.  <response>: Was an addition built on the house? This happened to my parents, they bought a house that had attic space converted into an additional bedroom by the previous owner without a permit. The town hadnt been counting the space as habitable. Somehow their inspector missed it, but it came up when they sold the house. 