2 floor apartment...
Hello:
Currently a landlord/owner in East Rutherford, NJ. We currently have what is zoned as a two family house, fully rented currently by two separate tenants. The house consists of a locked exterior door, that opens up into a foyer. Here in the foyer you have a locked entrance door into the 1st floor apartment. Also in the foyer, there's a locked second entrance door , which goes up to the second floor. On the second floor there's a locked entrance door into the 2nd floor apartment. On the same second floor there's also locked entrance door into an attic apartment.
So in essence, the 2nd and 3rd floor spaces are separated from the 1st floor by a locked entrance door.
The 3rd floor attic apartment is currently not legal since I don't think the prior owner pulled permits for it (ie, shares utlities with 2nd floor, no oven range, etc.), and the area is simply not zoned for more than 2 family housing.
The 3rd floor space currently has a bathroom, half kitchen (no cooking facilities), a small LR, walkin-closet, and 1 bedroom. The 3rd floor attic is within the same area of the 2nd floor apartment just one floor up
We would like to at some point see if we can make money off of the 3rd floor space. Aside from renting it , which has it's own potential problems due to the zoning issues.
We would like to see if we can convert it in the following way, and perhaps make it a legal area:
1) Remove the current bathroom facilities and turn it into a laundry room with washer and dryer.
2) Remove kitchen sink, and rearrange the countertops so it can be used for folding clothes, etc.
We would then rent the space as part of our 2nd rental unit, with of course an increase in rent for the 2nd unit to account for increase square footage and laundry facilities the tenants would receive. We would wait until the current lease is over for this change over.
Now some questions:
1) We really want to make this legit, and would like to know how we can do this with the blessing of the zoning/construction department of our town and least amount of financial "damage"
2) The 3rd floor apartment currently does have it's own separate entrance with a lock, I'm not completely sure that I will be forced to remove it, or if it can stay figuring it will be part of the rentalble space for the 2nd floor unit.
3) Since we as owners don't occupy the property so it's a complete rental property, we are not sure if we can make the changes ourselves, or would we be forced to get a contractor for some of the work. We certainly want to go through the permit process, but the question is can we get permits for the work if we do it ourselves? I've heard in some places in NJ that once the property is full rental you have to hire contractors, and owners can't perform the work anymore.
I know this might be a very specific scenario for NJ, but if anyone has any insight into NJ dealings in these areas it would be appreciated if you shared your knowledge.
Thank You,
Amado