Zoning is a legal limitation, created by a legislature or municipal authority, designed to place similarly used properties in close proximity with similar properties. Usually, though not always, it is part of a master plan designed to obtain the highest, and best use, of land.
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About Zoning
Zoning law, and variances from it, are an arcane area of the law that is important for the real
estate practitioner to understand, and the general practitioner, as well. Zoning affects real property,
and sometimes personalty that becomes a fixture, and the consequences can cause extended
litigation, and can severely restrain the practical (though not necessarily legal) ability to convey
land.
Zoning is typically administered by local zoning boards of adjustment, usually in conjunction
with a local municipal authority, and the results are accorded a high degree of judicial respect and
a general reluctance to overturn a zoning decision. (See In Re Town of Cortlandville Zoning Bd.,
NYLJ 12/5/2000 1:5-6).Zoning is a legal limitation, created by a legislature or municipal authority, designed to place
similarly used properties in close proximity with other like properties. Usually, though not always,
it is part of a master plan designed to obtain the highest, and best use.
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Setbacks
Setbacks, or the distance from the property line to buildings on real property. If your community requires 20 feet from each house to the edge of the property on the side yard, and you want to build on an extension as a family room, if the design comes, say, to within 18 feet of the property line, a variance is required -- permission to build it that way. If permission is denied, you must conform to the zoning requirements
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Landscape
Landscaping or similar changes. Most zoning laws have requirements for greenery or other improvements. This is typically called site plan work.
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Historical Context
First of the contemporary American zoning laws took place in 1916, in of all places, New York City. It was a part of a master plan whose purpose – back then – was to limit the size of then-imposing skyscrapers, whose widespread building had just begun, and eliminate what is still referred to as old-law tenements that trapped a nation of immigrants on the lower East side, as well as uptown.
(The Woolworth Building, at 233 Broadway, in lower Manhattan, still a tourist site, was the tallest building in the world at 65 stories when it opened in 1913. Old law tenements, a railroad car style of apartment, were built mostly between 1880 and 1916, and are still in use today -- though nearly all have been rehabilitated to upscale apartments).
Fear of the loss of sunlight, and air, were behind these original zoning laws -- something that has not been lost on the draftsmen of other strikingly similar statutes that have evolved in communities, nationwide, in the intervening century.
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Ingess & Egress
Ingress and egress from a property. This can range from a driveway to a road. Zoning boards can be required to pass on or approve a request to widen a home's driveway, too, if it deviates from the accepted norms for size.
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