Speaker 1: All right, what's going on guys? Charles and Rob, aka The Handsome Homebuyer. Today we are talking about a very, very, very important topic if you want to be any kind of real estate investor anywhere in the country. And obviously this applies differently depending on where you live, but you must understand it in order to be a very successful real estate investor, developer, depending on how big you want to go. But even if you're looking to just build a house, put an extension on, whatever it might be, it's a very good idea to understand land use and zoning. So essentially, what is zoning? Zoning is a series of laws that govern how land can be used. And unfortunately, in a lot of places, this stuff is super old, super dated. And in the case of Long Island, it really restricts development and it's a hindrance to the progression of all of Long Island, in my opinion. And this is similar all the way across the country. So essentially, these laws are set up that tell you what you can and cannot do on a property, what you can build, how big it can be, what type of use, who can occupy it, things of that nature. From as simple as, can you build a single family home there, to can I build an assisted living facility, a commercial office building, whatever it is. A lot of times we get calls into Captain Permit. If you don't know the captain, there's the phone number right there. You need to know the captain saying, hey, I want to turn this house into a two-family house. Or is it a two-family house because it has two kitchens in it? Or I want to build an apartment building on this particular site. There's a lot of things that govern what you can do, when you can do it. So very, very high level, because this gets very, very detailed. And this could be a five-hour course just on land use and zoning. And we wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface. Let's talk about different types of zonings, key terms, things you're going to have to be aware of. And again, obviously, if you have any questions, you can always call the captain right here, 516-513-8838, with any questions about what you could do with a piece of property or a building. So the first thing that happens is someone, I see a piece of property and I'm like, what can I build there? Right? Kind of jump around a little bit. There's different sources that you have. Google is obviously the best source. If you're just looking to do kind of like a quick back of the envelope understanding of what can be built there. An architect is obviously your best bet as you drill down to see really what you can build there. So you go to Google, you put in, let's say, Village of Patchogue zoning map, because there's a piece of property and you want to know what you can build. So the zoning map will come up, you'll look at it, it'll tell you it's an A1, A2, J6, whatever that might be. Then you go back to Google and you type in zoning regulations for Village of Patchogue, you know, Town of Oyster Bay, Town of Brookhaven. Now, Long Island's not that great, but there are certain townships like Town of Brookhaven, which we're actually going to give a little bit of props to right now, that have a pretty good online platform where you can actually look up what it is and it directs you over to E-Codes. E-Codes is an online platform that if you look up whatever the particular zoning is, it'll tell you exactly what you can build there and the regulations. And even then, it's a lot like reading stereo instructions and you're going to need a professional in most cases, like Captain Permit, or in certain cases with municipalities like Town of Islip, they're very nice, you can call them up, they'll tell you exactly what you can build there, you can set up meetings, it really depends on who you're dealing with. But again, you're going to go to Google, you're going to look up the zoning map for that area, you're going to figure out what that parcel is zoned for, then you're going to go to E-Codes to see what the regulations for that particular zoning is, height, use, setbacks, all these different things, and then obviously you're going to reach out to a professional to really drill down. But certain things that you need to know, let's say something is zoned residential, and there are different levels of residential, like for example, in Islip or Brookhaven, some places you have to be on an acre, some places you have to be on two acres, some places you have to be on a half an acre or a quarter acre, some places, some townships, they have all those things, it just depends on where you are. So just because you have a piece of land that's a half acre in one part of the town, doesn't mean that you can't build on it in another part of the town, it requires it to be one acre. So you really have to know. Alright, obviously there's commercial uses and mixed uses, and again, there's commercial, but there's different levels of commercial, there's different levels of residential, there's different levels of mixed use. There's things called overlay districts, where essentially you have a particular zoning and you can take another zone and put it on top. Case in point, Farmingdale Village has a discretionary affordable housing overlay zone, where they want to encourage affordable housing. So in certain areas, they will, even though you have a certain underlying zoning, there's an overlay district that floats over it, so you can use either one or the other. And then there's change of zone. A change of zone is when literally you are changing a zone from one thing to another to allow a totally different use. This is a little bit complicated, it gets extremely political, and most times, unless there's a government initiative for it, it's very hard to get it done. A lot of you guys remember I tried to work with the Oceanside Jewish Center to rezone from residential to commercial, the entire community came out, they tried to like, you know, hang me at the stake, or whatever, and it didn't go through. But we were looking to change single-family residential zoning into a commercial zone that would allow an assisted living facility building. Like I said, in order for something like that to happen, you have to go in front of the town board. The town board can basically decide if they want it or if they don't, based on what they feel the public may or may not want, or more importantly, based on if they feel they're going to get elected or not. That's how these things work. Very, very, difficult to do unless the government themselves is coming out with a master plan or the initiative to change it. And then variance. Variance is happening, you hear this very often, from things as simple as a deck to, we just got an assisted living facility approved over in Farmingdale Village, we needed a variance for the fourth story, as well as some increased lot coverage. So, a variance is essentially where you're asking for relief, slight relief, where you need to go a little bit bigger, a little bit taller, something like that. The last thing you have to deal with, not so much in Nassau County on the North Shore, yes, but more so out East in Suffolk County, is the health department. If you're building a single family home, in Nassau County, it's not a big deal because you have sewers, so there's no real health department issues. You plug into the sewer, you're good to go. But out East, in Suffolk County, they don't have sewers, and they have septic. So in the case of septic, there's a lot of different rules. You have to, if you're looking to build a house, an apartment building, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, you have to conform to both zoning and health department. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that in the town of Islip, you have a parcel and it only has to be 15,000 square feet. You have your, you have a 100 foot frontage, 150 foot depth, it's 15,000 square feet. You're like, great, I'm good to go. Not necessarily. If that lot wasn't single and separate as per the 1983 tax map, most likely you're not going to be able to build there because now the health department requires a minimum of 20,000 square feet in order to be able to put the new septic systems in the ground or even the old ones. If that property had a house on it once upon a time, and it's less than 20,000 square feet, they will let you build there again. However, you can only build up to the square footage that was there before. So if you have a 500 square foot little bungalow, you can't build a 2000 square foot house. You can only build a 5,000 square foot bungalow. Now there's certain cases where let's say if you were close or even if you're not that close, you can go and apply, you can go and purchase either Pine Barrens credits or credits that you can apply to a smaller lot, but that can get very expensive. One credit from what I understand right now is going anywhere from 85,000 to 125,000, which operates very similar to air rights, but for the health department that will allow you to build on a smaller lot than 20,000 square feet. So as you can see, listen, there's a lot of moving pieces. Zoning is very complicated. There's law, there's politics, there's health department, there's a lot. The most important thing is to have resources like Captain Permit. We're very good zoning attorneys because there are attorneys that deal with a lot of this type of stuff that really know their stuff and have relationships in the town that understand what each town is looking for and doing. And the most important thing is really communication. So when you're looking to build something as a developer or even as a homeowner, contact your building department, go down there, contact the health department, sit with them. Most municipalities are very, very, very nice. They're happy to tell you what you can do, when you can do it. A lot of times they have designated days set up for you. Every Tuesday at 12 o'clock, you can make an appointment and come in and sit down and go through somebody. It's a pretty transparent process, but it is complicated. Obviously, if you have any questions about land use, zoning, you can always hit up the captain. There's the phone number. Obviously, drop them in the comments. I'm happy to respond to what anybody needs, wants. We're always here for you. The one last thing I'll leave you with, which is what we probably get the most phone calls on is, can I turn a single family house into a two family house? 99.9% of the time, the answer is no. Townships really don't want that. They don't want two family houses being turned into, they don't want one family houses being turned into two family houses. The taxes don't go up enough. It's a drain, increased density. Long Island is still a suburban place. Even though, in my opinion, it would benefit from a little bit more of an urban feel, because that's what the trend is going to. That's not what the people want. You're not really getting it. Thank you for checking it out. Like, subscribe, comment. We'll see you on next week's educational vlog.