Commercial real estate may be available for purchase, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s in the correct zone. If you’re looking to make a purchase, you may want to open a retail center. But you could find that it’s in an industrial zone or a residential zone. These are the biggest three categories, but there can also be various subcategories within any municipality, and there are also mixed-use zones where multiple types of use are permitted.
If your property is not correctly zoned for your commercial operation, you can ask the city for a variance. The approval of this variance means that you are allowed to violate the zoning regulations and carry out the initial project.
But does this change the zone? For instance, if the property was previously in an industrial zone and you got a variance for a retail location, does that mean the entire zone switches over to retail?
The zone stays the same
No, this doesn’t change the zone. All other properties are still bound by the same regulations. Even if you own multiple properties in the same space, only the one with the variance is affected. If another property owner wanted to use their real estate in the same manner, they would have to apply for their own variance.
Rather than thinking of it as something that changes the zone, a better way to think of a variance is as permission to break the rules. In your specific use case, that violation of the regulations has been permitted—but that’s all that has changed.
Zoning issues are just one thing to consider during commercial real estate transactions. Take the time to carefully look into all of your legal options.
