I may be putting a bid on a home that is commercially zoned. It is a normal 4 bedroom, 2 bath house. Perhaps the prior owner ran a home-based business? What effect does commercial zoning of the property have on me as a homebuyer/owner? Any help appreciated.
Some commercial zones prohibit your living on the property. You should check with the city/county zoning administrator if you are thinking of living in the house.
My parents own (and live in) a two family house in a commercial zoned area (it abuts a small office building to the south, and standard homes to the north).
Although it’s zoned commercial, that has had little or no effect. Over a decade ago the owners of the adjacent office offered to buy the house (at a ridicolously low price - obviously we turned it down) - they could have then immediately torn it down and expanded their office lot. If they had been more realistic, we would have sold. So I guess it has no real effect, at least on Long Island…
What I find really interesting is when I travel through older heavy industrial areas of NYC, Newark, Philly, Trenton et. al, where you can see almost solid blocks of machine shops, auto-body, chemical plants, storage lots, etc., and in between will be one or two homes (heck, there’s a few examples close to my neighborhood). These houses are usually pre-WWII style, meaning they were there when the industrial age, with attendant noise and pollution, was in full bloom.