Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Washington

Re: Real Estate

My overall response to your question is yes, but that comes with a healthy dose of "it depends." It depends on the city you are talking about, and the specific zoning regulations in that city, and whether they provide for variances in your specific type of commercial building that would allow you to use part of the building to live in.

If you want to save on lawyer's fees, I suggest that you do some digging along the lines I talk about above and dig up the zoning ordinances of your city.

If you are too busy or if this is economically a waste of your time to do this work, then I suggest hiring a law firm in the city in which you are thinking of purchasing and hire them to tell you what rights you'd have in your given situation.

Overall, assuming you are purchasing a building, I'd say be smart and hire someone to determine the answers for you, unless you could live with the answer no matter what it is. I bet the cost will be tax deductible anyway. Otherwise, if you are buying solely dependent on your being able to live there and if it turns out that you are wrong, that may result in a huge loss of funds. Better to spend a little on an attorney now than a lot later when you have bigger problems.