Since Pittsburgh (neighborhood in Atlanta) is super hot right now and investors are jumping on anything they can find, here are a few things, that are not well-known.

Until 2005 the zoning in Pittsburgh was R5 (duplex), but in 2005 that was changed to R4B (SFH) due to an effort of then council woman Cleta Winslow. BUT, the Fulton tax commissioner never updated the Pittsburgh records and thus everything still says R5, which is wrong.

So, there are a lot of duplexes in the area, which had been grandfathered in, because they became non-conforming with the zoning change. A lot of them are boarded up now and after 12 months not used in the 'grandfathered' way, they lost the grandfathering.

I've seen a number of boarded up duplexes advertised as duplexes in the mls, mentioning zoning of R5. The buyer of one of those then finds out that they can't get a permit to renovate a duplex, because it's lost its grandfathering. And since it's been recorded by code enforcement that the duplex has been boarded up for more than 12 months, there's no way to say that a tenant had been living in it until 6 months ago.

In addition, there are several tracts in Pittsburgh, that were never fully subdivided. The owner (at the height of mortgage fraud) in the mid 2000's owned several larger tracts, with several properties on them. He created a subdivision map, but all of the property lines state very small: 'proposed'. The subdivision proposal never went through the city of Atlanta, so, they still see that whole property as only 1 big lot. While the lot may have 6 or 8 different properties on it, which all were individually sold to straw-buyers for 250-300K each, on 80/20 mortgages. When they all got foreclosed, they all ended up with different owners. It makes it almost impossible to get a permit, if the property has been boarded up, because it doesn't really exist, according to the city.

It's not something I or other investors would have ever thought about checking. We're all used to finding our zoning at the tax commissioner's website.

Similar with some of the vacant commercial spaces. They may or may not be zoned commercial. And if they had been used as commercial and then got boarded up, they may now be zoned R4b and may not be able to get renovated as commercial space.

So, if you're planning to do any work in the Pittsburgh neighborhood, keep this in mind.

Atlanta, Georgia

18 Votes