Hmmm
Adam Mendoza said:
BOTH PROPERTIES UNDER ONE OWNERSHIP one tax id. city says its legal non conforming and must be used as single familes. not to be used as rental property and would not get occpancy permit to be used as rental property. owner has it vacant
Mr. Mendoza,
So I am not confused myself, I take it you meant the one tax lot is under one ownership and one tax ID.. You only have one property, not two, with two houses on it.. The jurisdictional authority is saying that neither of the two houses are allowed to be used as a rental, that both must be owner occupied.
If all I have above is true, you have one really weird puppy here..In my area I might find something similar where only one of the units (houses) could be rented but the other must be owner occupied.. This would be a case of a SFR home with an accessory dwelling unit (ADU).. I have run into many odd situations, but I have not run into exactly what you describe.. If your second house was a manufactured home I would be anticipating that it was allowed under a hardship permit to take care of a family member and such permits are temporary and only for the original owner who obtained them. In my area owners sell their properties and just sort of forget to tell the buyers a hardship permit is nontransferable and the extra manufactured home on the lot becomes illegal the moment the hardship use expired (death of family member) or the property is sold.. Under the hardship permit the manufactured home is then to be removed from the site.
Unless I knew I could trust my client to pay a reasonable cancelation fee in the event what I find out in research kills everything I would personally be telling my client they have a nonrefundable, payed in advance, retainer fee to be paying me for the additional research that has to be done.. If I were you I would not proceed without personally going to the assessors office, planning and permit departments, with one big overwhelming question being "How did this happen?".. I would want to know every bit of history they had on both houses and that lot, all the zoning changes, water meters, sewer hookups, the whole shebang.. My guess in my hunt would be that somewhere along the way, some owner did something illegal.. Such as got a permit for a storage building and then built a 2nd house.. A following second owner agreed to some solution with the county / city that both had to be owner occupied or something.. Politely put the public employees on the spot, demand they explain how such an unusual situation came to pass with a requirement both houses must be owner occupied.. Do not accept answers from them that make no sense (Often public employees come up with off the cuff silly answers attempting to get out from under doing the research.) I typically get booted up to the senior planner in a hurry in such cases.
You have to know the above.. You cannot properly advise your client, understand the appraisal situation any other way, or produce a credible appraisal (even if a Hypothetical Condition is used) any other way.. If your client expects you to do all that research for free I would decline the assignment myself.. Also, if you have one of these clients that starts telling you they do not want you to be the "permit police" and do not want you to discuss this with the jurisdictional authority because it might upset the borrower (once in awhile an appraiser researching such a case can cause a planner to red flag a property that is illegal.) turn the assignment down.. Some of the most serious board complaints against appraisers are a result of the appraiser failing to research such unusual properties directly with the planning department.
Barry Dayton
