Rezoning single family home to multifamily home

[Johnathan Boyle]

I have a property in Belleville, NJ that I am acquiring via short sale. Homes in the town of Belleville usually are sold via short sale near market value or slightly below. (Not enough to make numbers work). Therefore, if the bank does not accept my offer at the price needed for my rehab, I am SOL. I did find out however that it could be, based on zoning map, switched to a multifamily from a single family. The ARV as a single family would be approx. $300k (that I am not 100% sure about, it may be lower), but as a multi, the ARV could be approx. $350k- $375k (I am extremely confident on that, and could be higher) Overall, with that, the numbers will work. Now, my question is does anyone have experience with rezoning homes in the area and what are the steps to it? How much does it cost? Anything I am missing? etc? Thank you.

[Amit Patel]

I haven't done Belleville but have done other cities and hope this helps:

You have to talk to the Zoning office in Belleville and get info. In places where i have bought, for example, if I buy a single family and the zone allows 2 families, I can just do by right and convert it.
There is just a basic application needed with the zoning office.. My suggestion is to speak to an attorney first that does zoning in Belleville and find out what your options are. Just searching "zoning attorney" and if you don't find one nearby, call a bunch of attorney and ask them. They will refer you to someone they know who does work in the area.  Second, you should also speak to the Zoning officer in the town. Call him with the property lot number and address and he will be able to reference the map and tell you what you can build easily and what the process would be. Between these two resource, you should be able to get proper info. Note the initial conversation with the lawyers does not cost money so you won't have to pay anything out of pocket and in the end if the property can be converted from a 1 to 2 or 3 family as a right of way, you may not even need a lawyer but these things can get complicated so you really want to make sure you get as much info as you can before you buy the property. 

Last - You also need to know what you are going to do to convert from Single to Multi-fam. Are you tearing down. Building on top, subdividing. There are rules you will need to follow and you may need to work with an architect as well to walk through your vision. He will tell you what is involved as well for getting approval for the switch to Multi. 

Hope this helps.. Let us know how you make out with the bank..