Legalizing rental property on Long Island

[Justin Simoes]

I am currently thinking about buying a house in Nassau County NY. It’s an expanded cape and the upstairs has 2 identical apartments with seperate utilities from the main floor. I would live in the house while renting upstairs for the time being. My question is when moving on to the next house. How expensive will the process be to make the house 100% legit to rent the 3 total units when I leave? I don’t believe much if anything needs to be done to bring apartments to code.

[Frank Chin]

The first issue is what is the CO for the property and what is the zoning for the area. You have to be in conformity with these before you worry about building codes. Best thing is to check with the "city planning" in your area, where zoning is usually part off, and check the zoning maps, and the CO's for your particular property. By the sound of it, it's not built originally as a triplex, and a variance would be difficult to obtain if it's a one family zone.