Unique Zoning Situation

[Travis Hargreaves]

Hello everyone I have a zoning questions.

I recently looked at a piece of property that has two separate houses (listed as a multifamily) on the same lot and I was told they can only be sold as together. The seller is basing his prices on the comps of houses around him, but none of these comps have two houses on the same parcel of land. I asked the agent if it was possible to split each of the houses and resection the zoning. He said the owner has attempted this, but had no luck. However, I'm not sure how hard the previous owner had tried. My question is has anyone every tried to take one plot of land and split it so they become two separate houses to be sold individually? This would be my exit strategy, with my main strategy buy, rehabbing, and renting. Both houses need an extensive rehab so I would hate to pour money into both and if the time comes to sell I would only have potential buyers base the worth of the house to the properties around them. This would be nothing like the other around because two house exist.