When is a three-family house a one-family home? When it’s a one-family house with three residential units. Get it?

This real estate riddle is frequently played out in the New York metro area where one or more illegal apartments are created in a house to help the property owners generate income from their home. The problem comes when that homeowner/landlord attempts to sell their illegally divided house with or without tenants. Banks don’t make loans to buyers of houses when an appraiser’s report description does not conform to the property’s legal status.

What defines an illegal unit? Another kitchen with a working stove is the “tell” even though there are certain situations where an appraiser will accept two kitchens in a one-family house. But three kitchens in a legal single-family home are pushing it; I’ve had one of those. Four kitchens in a legal two-family house are pushing it exponentially; I’ve seen one of those.

The solution involves removing the offending kitchen(s). This needn’t mean major renovation. Usually the removal of a stove and capping of the gas line will do the trick. Think of it not as loosing a kitchen, but gaining a wet bar – and there are no restrictions on that.

You can’t make this stuff up.

A husband and wife walk into a 96-year-old house . . .

No joke. When touring a vintage, attached, brick row-house on a landmarked block in the Mott Haven section of The Bronx with my clients, we were all predictably concerned about a noticeable dip in the ceilings and slope of the floors at the rear of this house on all three levels. The cause of our concern was found in the basement where we discovered that the rear twelve feet or so of the structure’s 12”-square solid timber central support beam seemed to have been surgically removed at some point in the house’s more recent past

Why would someone do something so obviously destructive? Had the beam failed due to some flaw; was it somehow catastrophically damaged without any evidence in other parts of the structure? No, apparently, it was in the way of PVC pipes run to connect an added bathroom upstairs to the existing basement plumbing. We knew it was true, because there just aft of the remaining section of the central support beam, hung a questionable plumbing installation and nearby on the floor, snug against a foundation wall, laid the amputated length of support timber.

It could all be fixed and my clients went to contract on the house.

You can’t make this stuff up.