Updated almost 10 years ago on . Most recent reply
Renting a basement apartment
I am in the planning stages of building my forever home in Michigan. The house I have chosen is small. It will have a full basement with 9 foot ceilings. It has daylight windows on either side of a slider. I would like to pay this house off in 15 years, right before I retire. I would like to rent the basement out to help with this goal. I was thinking of building a great room situation in the basement with a living and dining area and kitchen all open to one another. Two bedrooms and one bathroom plus stackable washer and dryer. I plan on putting egress windows in both bedrooms. You will be able to enter the basement using stairs on the landing from the garage. The main house is accessible through a door on the same landing. So basically separate entrance to the basement apartment. The problem is in my area you can't have a stove in the basement. I have seen pictures and discussions where people have skirted around this issues by providing a microwave, tabletop toaster/convention oven and a tabletop induction range. This won't be a dark, dank basement apartment like we lived in in college, but a really nice bright open living area. I plan on offering a reasonable rent because of the no stove thing. If I do something like this (and follow all rental codes in the area) do I have any hope of making this a legal apartment? I would prefer legal to non legal. This house is being planned for land that I own, no HOA, no really close neighbors. And another big concern is would anyone even consider living in an apartment without a stove? I don't cook much so that wouldn't be a problem for me. I have seen the 'no stove' setup in Tiny homes before and they seem to do fine. About 10 years ago my brother in law lived in an illegal basement apartment but it had an electric stove. He said he never used it all, just the mocrowave! I was thinking of putting an apartment over the garage but would prefer the basement. If I decided years from now to not rent it anymore it would be additional living space for my family. A garage apartment wouldn't lend itself to that. Am I crazy!
