2 Non-Permitted ADU's on Property

[Courtney Tran]

Hello BP Community, I have a question for ya and if any of you in San Bernardino County (or even those not) can shed some light on this matter/your experience, I would be eternally grateful. 

I am looking at purchasing a property that, on paper, is a 3 bed & 1 bath house. HOWEVER, it looks like the flippers that worked on the house added in 2 bathrooms to the main house AND two non-permitted (essentially unbeknownst to the city) ADU's that are 2 bd, 1 ba each. Given that the property is not zoned as a multifamily, conventional lenders are saying no to us. I do have a portfolio lender who is willing to lend to us on the property.

So now I have many questions/concerns: 

Have any of you ever bought a property with non-permitted additional dwelling units that was on a property not properly zoned, and how did you remedy this situation? I would gladly make an offer on the place (cash flow cow potential given the price I'd be taking a mortgage on) BUT I'd be running the risk of the city code enforcers someday saying "Whoa! This is not meant to host multiple unrelated renters and is not meant to have this many separate units... we are gonna red tag this place!!!" and insurance companies are going to say "No way Jose, we aren't going to cover property that is not even supposed to be there since if it burns down we cannot rebuild it (the city will say, wtheck are you rebuilding there was nothing there in the first place). 

I COULD get permits after the purchase, but we are looking at possibly 50K a pop (or more) per ADU... I COULD make a conditional offer if the sellers will obtain appropriate permits and such but they are not going to do that or they would have done things legally in the first place...

Re-zoning would require city hearings and more thousands of dollars and I wouldn't want to do that with even the slightest risk that the city will shoot down the proposal and now I have paid mid-400k for a property that will not cash flow since I cannot put the other two dwellings into service for rental income. 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. 

I am wondering if the zoning is even really an issue, because I thought the issue would only be if there were multiple families under one roof. Technically, the families would be under different roofs so maybe only the permitting is the problem here. 

[Chris Seveney]

@Courtney Tran

Run away from this deal. If they built it non permitted they probably cut a lot of corners elsewhere.