Posted by John Merchant on March 07, 2010 at 15:11:14:
In Reply to: Want to Buy a Large House and Turn it into a Venue posted by Jennifer Campbell on February 23, 2010 at 14:59:22:
Since your business would be a business use of the RE I'd suggest your talking to City Dept of P&Z to see if they'd have any legal problem with this.
A wedding venue seems innocuous enough but it would have parking of lots of vehicles, lots of late hours coming and going and other things any business would have so P&Z is likely to have an opinion and could feel it's an illegal use of a residential property.
I own an SFR on a busy corner and a few years back a neighbor with a house on a close-by corner solicited my help in trying to rezone his SFR lot to a commercial usage as he wanted it to be his RE Agency and wanted to erect big signs saying so.
I said sure and went to the hearing, not in any way expecting the hub-bub and furor we had created among the rest of his neighbors...man were they up-tight and up in arms about his plan and to a household were 100% against his plans.
They won, he lost and we both learned a lesson that day.
Now while a wedding venue sounds innocuous to you and me, that's no sign the neighbors would agree so it might be turned down and you'd be ahead of the game to check it out before you buy that house.