zoning permit in Philadelphia

[Account Closed]

Question to Philadelphia investors. How hard is it to obtain a permit to use a house as two family building. My husband and I are new to investing and when we bought a duplex in 19152 area, never bothered to check the zoning on it.

Turned out city doesn’t have any record of the use of that property. It is build as multyfalimy and zoned as RSA-3. So city refused to give us two rental licenses on it. Is it possible to fix it without a zoning atterney? All suggestions are welcome.

[Giang Nguyen]

Hi everyone! I'm gonna piggyback on this topic real quick. 

@Account Closed I'm not sure if you have checked there before, but I was told that if you check on http://www.phila.gov/zoningarchive/ and the documents are not there, it's best to assume they don't have it. I have seen use registration and variance applications on there before if the property has them. I think instead of structuring the offer to have the contingency for zoning, I would actually check the zoning as a part of your initial screen before making an offer. Once you see something that spark your interest, checking the documents on the zoning archive should take less than 5 mins. An investor I know had the same problem with zoning, hired a lawyer and was unsuccessful. However, she then just flipped it as a SFH and sold it as that. I don't know much about Airbnb rental requirement in Philadelphia but I wonder if that's an option to get around the duplex problem? Either rent both units on Airbnb, or I have read about people partnering up with their tenants to rent out the other unit.

A question I have on this topic is that a multi-unit I'm looking at in Philadelphia has RSA5. There's a document in the zoning archive back in 1947 for the property regarding use registration and permit as a duplex. The stamp said no registration was required for use as a 2 family housing and nothing has changed since then. I'm assuming that means the property is grandfathered in? Can someone confirm this please?