Decoding the mystery of zoning

[Rasheed Behrooznia]

Hi BP family! So throughout my investing, I have found the zoning to be one of the most mysterious aspects. For one it seems to differ around the country, with various terminology and regulation, and two it takes me a long time to decipher the code into the basic information I need, like how many units can I have on the lot.

My question, does anyone have any advice, or a cheat sheet, or website(s) or other information they use to quickly decipher the zoning codes? For example, starting from an address, I can usually quickly get to the zoning code (Such as RS-1-7 as an example), but from there it takes me too long to decipher what that means at a high level (how many units can be on the lot, can they be detached, etc). There has got to be a more efficient way than my constant googling.

Please help! Thank you in advance.

[Christina Labowicz]

scoutred.com is an easy way to get basic information on zoning. If you sign up for a free login then you can see what the dwelling unit/lot square footage is. Take 3808 Villa Terrace, San Diego 92104, for example. The zoning says RM-3-8, if you click on that you see that you can build one dwelling unit per 800sqft of lot area, with a 6250sqft lot means it can support 7.8 units. There are all sorts of nuances of if you put a percentage of affordable housing etc. in the development then you can build more density, etc., but this website is a good place to start. 

There is also a new ADU law that passed January 2020 that you can add one additional dwelling unit (ADU) per residential zoned parcel (and a junior ADU, if its your primary residence), or multiple ADUs to multifamily zoned parcels. You can find more about that here: https://www.sandiegocounty.gov...

San Diego is trying to up-zone neighborhoods to fit higher density to chip away at the supply/demand imbalance for housing, their effort results in "Complete Communities" which you can learn more via this website: https://www.sandiego.gov/compl...