Nonconforming Multi-Family in RS6 Zoning

[Brad Collins]

Hey BP,

Excited to say that we're currently under contract on our second investment property (our first multi family), located in Hendersonville, NC - about a half-hour outside of Asheville. We plan to offer some of the units up for STR and are digging into the regulations a bit more to ensure that won't be an issue. From what we have learned, it's a fairly friendly town for STR, all things considered.

However, during our due diligence, we discovered that the property is zoned RS6 (single family residential). I was a bit confused by this, since it's clearly built as four identical apartments - each with a matching layout and full kitchen plus a main entryway with a shared staircase. I suppose it's possible that, at some point, a very symmetrical house was gutted and converted to apartments... but this seems unlikely. Then again... the water & gas are shared utilities...

Anyways, we reached out to planning and zoning and got the following response:

They included the full section for "Nonconforming Uses" from the zoning ordinance. I'll post this in the comments to keep the OP brief. TLDR: If we stop using it as an apartment (not planned) or if it suffers more than 50% of it's value in damages (fire or other act of god), then it would no longer be grandfathered in and must convert to SFH. This would be a big loss for us because it's not a simple conversion back to single family and our numbers are based on four units (with either STR or LTR). On the flip side, the chances of this happening would also be pretty darn low.

Any thoughts? Have other folks dealt with "existing nonconforming" properties? Am I being a bit too paranoid? Your wisdom is much appreciated!