Making a separate unit in SFH and renting it as MTR without legal converting.

[Denis Boyda]

Hi all. I've just bought 3-bd 2bath SFH. It would perfectly split for a 2-family house: 1-bd on the first floor and 1(or2)-bd and the second floor. Unfortunately, current zoning restrictions do not allow us to convert it to Multi-family. There are some multi-family nearby but they were converted a while ago. The second floor has 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. One of the bedrooms is very small. I am thinking of adding a kitchen bar/cabinets, sink, microwave, and fridge to this small bedroom and using it as a mini-kitchen. After doing this I would like to rent the second floor "by rooms" as MTR. The tenant will have a separate entrance door and three rooms (one converted to a mini-kitchen). It is legal in MA to rent a house by room to 3 tenants or less without a license. The weird thing is that I will rent 3 bedrooms and 1 bath to one person.

I wonder if someone was doing so before and if this is a legal scheme. Can the inspector decide that house was illegally converted to a multi-family even though the second floor does not have a stove and there are no walls separating the two units? There will be some closed and sealed doors on the first floor which will separate units on the first floor from the second floor.

I would highly appreciate your advice and would be happy to talk to an attorney who specializes in this.

[Bonnie Low]

If you're in a highly regulated area it's best to just go into the building department and ask them about what you want to do. It could be extremely costly to do it and then find out later you have to change it.