Staying Under 50%

There is a house (see photograph below) on our recently purchased property which we want to tear down and replace. We are trying very hard to design a replacement house that would not require any special permits. Our initial problem was staying with in the lines, something that I will make clearer once I start to post details of the whole process.

But now we have hit another snag. We are allowed to replace the existing house and replace it as long as the replacement is no more than 50% larger. If the new house is larger than that, we have to get a special permit and it is not clear how hard or how long the permitting process will be.

The real estate listing for the current house says that it is 3009 sq ft. That is based on three floors, the main floor, the second floor and the finished basement, which includes 2 bedrooms. However, the way we are reading the law, the town may not count the finished basement in the house size. If that turns out to be the case, the existing size is 2586 sq ft including the garage. And right now, our proposals for the new house comes out at more than 3879 sq ft (the 50% larger threshold).

So our architect is trying to get some feedback from the town on this problem. And we wait. Its not clear that removing a room from the main floor to reduce the size will be acceptable to us (getting rid of our proposed shed would be OK).

This is the existing house and garage (from the real estate listing). We will be keeping the garage.

Update: according to Daphne, the 50% is only an issue if we connect the new house to the existing garage with a breezeway. That’s because the existing garage is non-conforming (its too close to the road). If we do not add a breezeway, then there may be no problem with exceeding the 50% larger size limit.