The downstairs sleeping room came with the house, finished by a prior owner, and both the listing sheet and the seller’s math counted it as bedroom number three. A permit record does that same job for a finished basement, telling a buyer that someone licensed pulled the job, that a town inspector saw the framing and the wiring before drywall covered them, and that the circuits feeding the room were not a guess. An egress opening, a permit and a set of signed inspection cards cost real money and a few weeks of calendar, and they still cost less than a price correction plus a renegotiated repair list.