Selling Air Rights
Okay, there has to be someone out there with pretty extensive zoning knowledge who can help me with some advice I’m giving to a friend who has had an offer for his spare FAR. His house and the adjacent development lot are in an R6 zone. This zone has two basic requirements both of which…
Okay, there has to be someone out there with pretty extensive zoning knowledge who can help me with some advice I’m giving to a friend who has had an offer for his spare FAR.
His house and the adjacent development lot are in an R6 zone. This zone has two basic requirements both of which are contingent on the effective building height (the total built square footage classified as contributing to the FAR divided by the total building footprint). The first of these requirements is the open area ratio (the unbuilt footprint of the site divided by the overall building FAR square footage). The second is the allowable floor area ratio. It is obvious from my calculations that just adding my friends excess FAR square footage to the developer’s site will do nothing to enable the developer to add square footage because as soon as he adds it he will exceed the minimum required open area ratio (given the height limitations and the practicality of a minimum workable depth for an apartment building).
The only way that transferring air rights seems to work in this particular case is if the two lots are merged for zoning purposes, thus enabling the merged lot to take advantage of the improved open space ratio of the combined lots. Of course I understand that the FAR square footage of my friend’s house has to be added to the new building square footage in the zoning calcs, but the result is still one that enables the developer to construct additional area without exceeding open area ratios or exceeding allowable height and FAR limits.
Am I on the right track here? Is the merging of two lots for zoning purposes typically the way deals like this are structured?
Thanks a lot,
John Ife
I believe my house has Air rights it is zoned R6 how can i be sure i have them? they have never been sold according to records.
What Alex said – particularly the part about hiring an attorney.
P.S. Once you have a merged zoning lot, the open space calculations are for the entire zoning lot, not just the tax lot. And different uses are calculated with different factors (residential, commercial, community facility, etc).
The only way to sell air rights is to merge “zoning lots”. Your “tax lot” will be restricted and unable to use whatever Zoning Floor Area you sell, but it doesn’t change your tax lot status. You can keep separate tax lots. A zoning lot merger has nothing to do with tax lots. Your friend should hire a real estate development attorney to really work this deal out. Assuming he’s getting paid a lot of money for the ZFA, it will be worth it.