Neighbor Downstairs Wants to Convert Single Floor into an Apartment - Advice Needed!
Brownstoners, I need a bit of advice from you all. Our neighbor below us (whom we have a good relationship with) has a duplex in the same brownstone as us. We are in the duplex above hers. She told me yesterday that she wants to convert the top floor of her duplex into an apartment…
Brownstoners, I need a bit of advice from you all. Our neighbor below us (whom we have a good relationship with) has a duplex in the same brownstone as us. We are in the duplex above hers. She told me yesterday that she wants to convert the top floor of her duplex into an apartment to either sell or rent out. I have mixed feelings about this as we are first time home owners and honestly, I’m not sure what the impact would be on a) the value of our property and b) the gas/water/construction problems that it might create. As far as I know, she would have to have a kitchen put in on that floor.
Is this the sort of thing she would have to get permission from us first to go ahead with? The offering plan on the building says that any sort of subletting has to be pre-approved by the other building owners. She said that she has already been speaking with her lawyer to ‘do this properly’.
On the flip side, we would like to have roof rights, so would this be a fair trade off?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Thanks.
You should also look at what are other implications if you have 4 family instead of 3. Different tax structure, different building codes should you ever want to do work etc.
Thanks UW. Yeah, it’s a tricky one. I like to keep an open mind and shooting something down at this stage could create problems later if for some reason we wanted to rent out our place at some stage. I think the problem is she only really uses one floor of her duplex, so she sees it as a money earner to rent it out with kitchen/bathroom etc.
Hopefully there is a happy compromise somewhere 🙂
Thanks for the clarification OP.
Your original question was about property value and construction etc. If everything is done legally, the impact on the property value should be limited to whether potential buyers would prefer a building with three members of the HOA or four. Four people spreads out the workload, but it also raises the percentage of having a crazy person on the board.
Regarding construction, this will be a short-term hassle. There will be dust, water shutoffs, gas shutoffs, garbage in the front, contractors coming and going, etc. Only you can say whether you’re up for that or not. But if you ever want to do a major reno, you might want to cut some slack for others.
And it’s a condo? They just can’t separate their unit into two and sell it on the market? This needs to be voted on by the HOA and legal changes need to be made to the condo. This involves lawyer, the NY attorney general, the other unit owners, etc..
She can rent out rooms ala a roomate situation but can’t install another kitchen without dealign with the above.
Thanks so much for the input so far. UW, here is some specific info. regarding the building:
The building & property info info. from nyc.gov states:
Residential Units: 3
Total # of Units:3
Land Use:Multi-Family Walk-up Buildings
Zoning:R7-2
4 floors total – (lady on garden level, owner below ours with duplex and our duplex). So, 5 floors really.
It also states that sprinklers are already installed.
Thanks.
OP, this is confusing. How many floors is this building? Sounds like 5 floors – garden apt, 2nd/3rd floor duplex, 4th/5th floor duplex. is that correct? In order to answer your question, we need to know what the current composition of the whole building is.
If you need to change the C of O and make significant changes to the offering plan, plus adding sprinklers to the whole building, my guess is that your neighbor will find the process cost-prohibitive.
There is one upside benefit to this….you will likely wind up being the largest shareholder in the condo and therefore have voting rights that could exceed all of the others individually, but probably not combined.
I’m sure a lot of people are going to offer advice, but what you really need to do is speak to an attorney. Beyond the physical construction aspects of this situation, there are big financial implications. IMHO, you should not approve of this idea, nor seek to trade roof rights for approval.
Just to add, it is a 3 family building (there is another lady in the garden level apartment). Would this be a really bad thing for us?
Thanks all.