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We’ve been looking at 3-family, 3-story houses, but the problem is that to afford one, we’d need a rental, but there is no separate entrance below stoop as is the case with classic 2-family brownstones (instead, there’s a small stoop to street/garden level, and then an English basement that usually contains mechanicals so can’t, I believe, be a legal rental by itself). So, we were thinking we had to rent 3rd floor, which would mean leaving common stairwell throughout house (eating significantly into owner’s living space) and then creating interior stairwell in owners duplex (or triplex, if you count English basement, which many of these have). But today, a friend suggested we should instead rent the ground floor, and live in flors 2 & 3 – that way, I suppose we just close off door at top of stairs to our unit. For garden access, the friend suggested we build a deck from 2nd floor to garden, which seems kind of a steep descent. Have others done this? Any advice on how to get rental income from this kind of building, while preserving a good owner’s unit, would be appreciated. Living on one floor is not a good option for us since we already have a floor-through condo and the whole point of making such a huge investment is to get more living space.
Thanks in advance!