I.E. turn rental properties into condos.  

I am buying a triplex that was built as townhouses.  It is being sold by its original owners as a rental property but it would be perfect to break up and sell as condos.  Townhouses sell well here in my little town because there is a shortage on real housing, and the rental market has been weakened due to a ton of low income housing built but the higher end rentals are still doing well.


So what I have to do to do it?  What does it take to set up a condo association?  What do I have to do to my mortgage in order to sell off parts of my property?

TIA.

First of all you probrobly need to pay a visit to the code enforcer. It sounds to me if it were originally 3 separate townhomes that - if the zoning has not changed - you should be able to convert them back. You want to make sure you are able to do what you want with it, cause it would suck to buy it and then find out after you can't do it.

Now if it is row houses you should not have as much a problem selling them as if it were a true triplex. Condo conversions are tricky. You can make money, but it was a fad that gained popularity but know that some towns discourage this action and will forbid you to do this.

I would retain a good RE lawyer to answer your questions about going forward. I have not done a conversion so I can only offer my opinion, and speculate.

Cheers.

Thanks storm.  IT is not something that has been trendy here in AK, and especially not in my town...actually I am going to be outside city limits and there are no borough regs on it.  

The place is being sold by its original owners who built it like this because initially they could not afford a regular house, so adding a couple units made it easier for them to get financing at the time.  They never thought of selling it as condos, but liked the townhouse style plans when they were having it built.

Off teh top of my head
you'll need seperate water taps
seperate gas taps
seperate electricty meters.
probably seperate sewers but that one you  never know.
gotta be brought up to code and code on multi-family is tougher than single family.  (bigger potential for damage)

What I think is that there aren't enough units to split the costs over.  usually they do stuff like this over 15 to 25 units so your base costs split out and with only 3, the costs will be higher than the price of each one.
Ask yourself also, would you buy one?  and more importantly, would you buy one for the price you are going to need to charge?

The smartest thing I've seen is to buy a duplex, and re-zone it as a condo.
This way, not only can you have two separate rental units, that you can each sell privately… but you still own the land.

Seems to be the newest thing here in Austin.