The garage became a room a long time ago. Somebody framed in the door opening, ran power to it, hung drywall over the old header, and it has been a bedroom or an office ever since. The paperwork stopped mattering the day the furniture went in.
That is the belief: a room lived in for fifteen years is finished, and a sign-off nobody came back for is paperwork nobody will look at. It holds up until the house goes on the market.
What actually happens
The city’s file records what was applied for and approved, not what the house looks like. On a garage conversion it says one of two things: a permit opened and never closed, or nothing at all.
An open job does not sit still. In San Diego, a building permit for a detached one- or two-family dwelling expires three years after issue, and if the work has not passed final inspection by then, all work stops until a new permit is issued. The new application falls under the fees and regulations in effect when it is submitted — current code, not the code the room was built to…