Converting 3 Car Garage into Apartment

[Dan Kelley]

I currently am owner occupied in a duplex that has a detached 3 car garage. I'm looking at moving out to move my family into a single family home, but I'd like to make this property cash flow as much as possible.

I've always had the idea in the back of my mind to convert the 3 car garage into a rental unit. It has rather high ceilings and I think could make quite a nice unit. I have a few questions though...

1. Does anyone know the legality of this? I'm in Iowa. Would I have to divide the land into two separate parcels?

2. Any idea on the expense to hook the garage up to water/sewer/gas? As I said, it is detached from the main house. It already does have electricity to it with it's own breaker panel.

Depending on your answers to these questions, I will also have to consider if it's worth the investment. My other option is to just rent out the garages as storage when I leave, however I'm only looking at like $60/ stall, so $180 max. I think, depending on how many bedrooms I could fit ( I'm thinking probably just 1) I could get around $450/month and have tenant pay all utilities if I did the conversion.

Any thoughts? I'm not sure if this is the right section at all to post this question but I was having a hard time deciding where to post.

Thanks for any input.