All Forum Posts by: Andrew McGregor

@Bruce Runn

Hi Bruce, thank you for the response. I've read a number of your posts since joining and I really respect your opinion. I had read about the proposed changes to zoning etc with the 2040 plan and ADUs seem like a great deal potentially for owners with smaller rental properties. I'm curious as to whether it will actually be any easier to make my third unit an ADU once the 2040 provision is passed. I'm concerned that they may make me bring everything up to current code similar to what you had to go through.

The city council wants higher density but if they make it onerous to do the conversions I think it will prevent many would be investors from adding ADUs. In my case the cash flow is not great on this property and if I was forced to bring the the property into compliance according to current code it may be best to just sell it to someone who would convert it back to a single family home. It’s a great neighborhood and the comps look great. But it would take three affordable rental units off the market and create a very unaffordable $500k+ single family home. Which is the opposite of what the city council is trying to achieve.

Hopefully they realize that a sensible form of affordable housing is already in place with the existing stock of small unit housing across the city. And making life difficult with ambiguous policies and unreasonable compliance standards is not going to help achieve their stated goals.

I have a nonconforming triplex in the Whittier Park neighborhood of South Minneapolis. The property is a licensed duplex but it has had three units, one on each floor, since way before I bought it. I have owned it since 2001 and I’ve only had one rental inspection which occurred back in 2007 I believe. The inspector didn’t want to go into the third unit, she inspected the first two floors and said that was enough, because it was a duplex... There were some minor repairs I had to address, but she made me install fire doors with auto-closers, because I was renting it as a triplex...

I’ve read some city council minutes and it seems like nonconforming triplexes are an ongoing issue that come up.

I’ve had three inspections of other properties in the last year, so I’m sure this place will be inspected soon. I guess the city got their new software working finally.

Does anyone else have experience with anything like this in minneapolis?

Has anyone ever had success converting a nonconforming triplex to a “conforming” triplex in Minneapolis?

Thank you!