Buying single family home zoned as multi unit

[J Folsom]

We are under contract for a beautiful SFH in Chicago. But during attorney review see that the house is zoned for multi unit. We think the sellers bought it 6 years ago as a multi-unit, did some renovations and have lived in it as a single family home. There are no permits for anything done to the house. Just the garage they built. Inspection revealed no issues with the home. We close end of May and the city offices are basically closed...no way they are going to be able to get it zoned as a SFR. Is it a bad idea to buy this house if it is zoned for MU? What will happen with the appraisal? Thank you!

[Samuel Pavlovcik]

The Zoning designation and the number of units do not necessarily coincide; especially in the City of Chicago.

@J Folsom If you want you can send me the property address and I can do a quick Zoning review of the property. I am a licensed Architect and do a lot of work in the City of Chicago as well as surrounding suburbs.

If your lot is RS3, that means that it is in fact "Single Family Zoning" according to the Chicago Zoning Ordinance

"17-2-0102 RS, Residential Single-Unit (Detached House) Districts. The primary purpose of the RS districts is to accommodate the development of detached houses on individual lots. It is intended that RS zoning be applied in areas where the land-use pattern is characterized predominately by detached houses on individual lots or where such a land use pattern is desired in the future. The Zoning Ordinance includes three RS districts – RS1, RS2 and RS3 – which are differentiated primarily on the basis of minimum lot area requirements and floor area ratios."

That being said, with RS3, you are allowed to have 1-unit per 2,500 sq.ft. of lot area. So if your lot is more than 5,000 sq.ft you are legally allowed to legally have more than one unit, but not required. I agree with @Brian Ploszay, based in the information you provided you shouldn't have any concerns. My only concern for you would be, as you mentioned before, that there was previously a 2nd unit in the building, and the fact that there doesn't appear to be any permits pulled on the property to remove it. That being said, with the address, we can look that up as well and see what work was done on the property with permits pulled. There's also the possibility that the previous 2nd unit, may never have been a legal unit, which is actually the more common issue at hand here in the City of Chicago, is that a home is Zoned for Single Family but has more than one unit. In those cases, some may be grandfathered in, while others may be required to remove the illegal unit. One easy, quick check is to see how many Water meters/services there are, or how many electrical panels there are. Those can be a good designation for having multiple legal units.

All of that being said, if you have a Single Family residence on a RS3 Zoned lot, you have no concerns for a legal/permitted use of the lot.