Using a 3 family as a 2 family
A three family is currently set up as a garden/ parlor duplex (kitchen on the garden level) and separate apartments on the 3rd and 4th floor. I want to use the house as an owners triplex above a garden rental. To do so I want to install a kitchen on the parlor floor (relocate 3rd floor gas and water to 2nd floor) and I had intended to remove the gas, but not the sink, from the 4th floor. I am filing some interior structural, electrical and plumbing work. Am I required to maintain a 3rd kitchen despite how I intend to use the house? Any suggestions how to work around this from users who have encountered a similar situation?
kassie319
in Renovation 9 years and 8 months ago
10
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10 replies
dazednconfused2 | 9 years and 8 months ago
Forget about the bedrooms. I was just using that as a typical example of separation of living spaces in a typical brownstone. Sorry if that was misleading. It sounded to me like the original poster was describing a relatively typical 3-story (basement/garden floor, first/parlor floor, and second floor) brownstone in which each floor is its own apartment. Like most brownstones that were either converted to multiple family or built as one originally, each apartment would then have one door, or possibly multiple doors, to the main stair hall. The main stair hall is entered at the parlor floor and the stairs are accessible to anyone that comes in the front door. It’s of course also possible that one could enter beneath the stoop and have access to the stair hall. In this kind of configuration, “common space” would mean the main stair hall, and would be accessible to anyone that comes in the front door. If the owner were to use the parlor and second floor as one apartment without legally converting them, each floor would be its own apartment. Technically, to go from one floor to the other, one would have to leave one apartment, enter a common space between two apartments to go up or down the stairs, and enter the other apartment. This is different from every other duplex in that a duplex has stairs within the dwelling unit. In this case, unless the upper two floors are legally converted to a single apartment, the stairs are not within the dwelling unit.
soundhoner | 9 years and 8 months ago
> According to the code, you cannot have a condition where you must go through a common space to get from one part of your apartment to another. In a typical brownstone where each floor is a separate apartment, the stair hall is a common space. As such it is not within a single apartment. If your bedrooms are in the third floor apartment and the kitchen and living spaces are in the second floor apartment, then you are going through a common space every time you go up or downstairs.
I read this several times. Are you saying that, in a duplex, there has to be at least one bedroom on (in the example you gave) on each floor? Because that’s the only way I can explain your statement “a condition where you must go through a common space to get from one part of your apartment to another” in a way that it doesn’t apply to every duplex in the world.
dazednconfused2 | 9 years and 8 months ago
I’m going to chime in as the overly-cautious-do-everything-by-the-book architect. While I agree that the process of converting from a 3 to a 2 is ridiculously burdensome, especially when you consider the very good chance of being required to install sprinklers, I have to point out that there is some risk involved in using a three as a two, and it may depend purely on the configuration of the building. According to the code, you cannot have a condition where you must go through a common space to get from one part of your apartment to another. In a typical brownstone where each floor is a separate apartment, the stair hall is a common space. As such it is not within a single apartment. If your bedrooms are in the third floor apartment and the kitchen and living spaces are in the second floor apartment, then you are going through a common space every time you go up or downstairs. Even if you have a separate entrance for the garden apartment, the two upper floor apartments still technically share the stair hall, purely because the building is a 3 family. So what is the danger here? In the end, very likely not much. You could get a violation for use contrary to C of O, which does carry some fines, possibly in the hundreds to a couple thousand dollars. Not too bad in the scheme of things. However, if the DOB finds out that you did any work to make the space function as a two-family, that’s where you could get into big fines. The ECB may issue a violation of a few hundred to thousands of dollars. But then you need to clear the violation, and to do that, you need to file the work with the DOB. The DOB charges a filing fee for all applications, and that fee varies with the amount of work filed. This filing fee can be a few hundred, or with significant amount of work, over a thousand. In a violation in a three family and up, the DOB fee goes to a minimum of $5000 or 14 x the filing fee. I’ll back this up by summarizing a chain of events we saw in one property’s DOB records, when we were working with the potential buyer to evaluate the house. It was a three family in which the owner put in a kitchen where there was none, without filing. The ECB issued an $8,000 fine and the owner was order to bring the house into compliance by filing or removing the work. Within one year, because the owner did not do so, the property received four $24,000 fines, a $16,000 fine, a $6,000 fine, a $2,400 fine, and a $2,000 fine, all from the ECB for the same infraction, and that still does not include the DOB fee for correcting the work. Now, I’ve seen similar posts to this before and have seen accusations that architects troll this site and try to scare people into hiring them. That is not at all what I’m doing here. You need to be aware of all of the possible consequences, and when someone says you’re not doing anything illegal in using it this way, you need to know that’s not true. In all likelihood, you wouldn’t get caught installing a kitchen, and you most certainly wouldn’t get caught removing one. And to be sure, if you don’t get caught, the cost of filing the work will far outweigh the cost of not filing. My only concern in writing what has turned out to be some sort of rant, is that we have been in the unfortunate position of helping people in exactly this situation, and there’s no fun in it for anybody. Please consider the possibilities and act carefully.
SoSlope | 9 years and 8 months ago
As resident2 says, there is absolutely nothing illegal about using a legal-3 family home as a two family. The inverse (using a two family as a three family), however, is definitely not legal.
pda | 9 years and 8 months ago
Consider how changing from a 3 family to a two family will affect both your taxes and your appraisal value of the property. Taxes could go up and appraisal go down.
resident2 | 9 years and 8 months ago
I would not file the removal of the third kitchen, because that would make it a legal two family. Just file the moving of the kitchen in garden duplex, if you want to from the garden to the parlor floor and leave it as a three family. There is nothing wrong with under using a house, it is using a two as a three that you run into serious issue. I would not take out the gas line to the third kitchen either. You may find it useful for a laundry room as well as having the option of flipping it back to use it as a three family later.
kassie319 | 9 years and 8 months ago
Can you elaborate resident2? Wouldn’t file the removal of the 3rd kitchen?
resident2 | 9 years and 8 months ago
I would not file it.
kassie319 | 9 years and 8 months ago
No, to question 1 or 2?! My post originated from a brief interaction with an expeditor who told me that removing a kitchen would mean an Alt 1 filing and a change of C of O. The conversation with him is to be continued on Monday, but I thought I’d ask for opinions on here to get me through the weekend..
no-permits | 9 years and 8 months ago
no