What would you do or would have done with the purchase? Smh
Hello everyone. I'll make this short and to the point....(maybe)
Bought my 1st property back in Jan of this year. 2 Family Semi in Staten Island, NY. I would live in the main house and rent out the apartment was the goal. Most comps were in the 610-660 range for a house this size. 2970sq ft including the finished basement. Originally the house was listed at 620k, but then dropped to 599k. Which is where we came in and made the offer at asking. 599k was a decent price. 590k would have been optimal but the seller was not budging on price because of comps.
2 reasons though he listed it "cheap". 1) The house needed TLC in terms of cleaning, painting, some flooring, landscaping, door hardware, the basics. It can even use an updated furnace as the original one is 35 years old. Needed at least 20k to make in pretty again. The apartment also need at least $3500 in items.
2) THE BIGGER REASON. The home did not have a Certificate of Occupancy. YES, can you believe it? My lawyer made it clear that its risky signing the contract and waiting for the DOB to correct the issuel, back to that later. Now the seller had already been working on getting the C of O prior to listing the house. But he started tooooooo LATE. A lot of these homes in the neighborhood were part of the Annadale/Arden Heights Mother/Daughter conversions. Major Giuliani had to get involved back in the day because of zoning issues and what not. My home was one of the last to actually get a true 2 family C of O our of hundreds of homes in the development
I was told in the beginning to NOT rent the apartment out because it can be a liability if the tenant finds out that there is no C of O, and then I can get in trouble if they report it. Now let me tell you a little about the setup. The entrance to the house and the apartment is on the left side of the home, NOT the front. It's also a split level, 3 floors up, 1 floor down to the basement. The studio apartment takes up 330sq feet of the front 1st floor of the house. The seller had moved the garage wall, only making room for storage and no car. So now the apartment becomes a 1 Bedroom at 485sq ft.
Here is the kicker...The DOB told the seller, to put the garage back to normal, and leave the apartment as a studio so things can get approved quicker. But that is not the case....We are still waiting on the Brooklyn commissioner to sign off on it. The Staten Island DOB commissioner refuses to sign it, because the now Brooklyn commissioner is the former one from Staten Island that dealt with this crap many years ago. Confusing I know, trust me.
Now upon closing the contract on the home, we (me, wife, lawyer) set some things straight to I didn't get screwed without lube. 1) The seller had to pay us upon closing $6,000 to us, for future missed rent, and some other things. 2) Also, $35,000 of the sellers money went into escrow, just in case for some reason we only end up getting a C of O for a single family.
8 months later, still no C of O, and I missed out on thousands in rent. The studio can go for $950 and if I get rid of the garage, then the 1 bdrm can get $1250. The precedent has ALREADY been set in the neighborhood that homes can still get approved for a 2 family without a garage and adding a living room to the apartment.
Should I just rent it out to someone I know, if I can find one? My wife and I are really worried that the DOB will take even longer. Honestly I thought giving the DOB 6-7 months was enough for such a simple thing. I guess not simple with these people.
The house is so nice and I would love to see it make us some money. But now maybe I should have listened to my lawyer and passed on the house. Thanks for reading folks.