Selling your property is not always easy

By MARY AMOROSO SPECIAL TO THE RECORD

Sari McGovern's parents opened a preschool on the first floor of their Fair Lawn home in 1985. Twelve years ago, Sari and her architect husband Sean bought the home and the school and continued running The Kiddie Garden, a state-licensed preschool with a capacity of 30 children.

Now, Sari wants to change careers and become a children's book author, and the McGovern family wants to relocate to the Manahawkin area to be closer to Sari's mother-in-law.

So the three-story, 3,900-square foot home/business is on the market for $875,000.

"We are grandfathered to be here, and it's an easy turnkey operation," Sari McGovern said. "My [preschool] license is good until June of 2009. A new owner could even come in and take five or six kids to begin with and build up. This makes for a unique opportunity to have a large preschool below a live-at-home qualified educator."

But what makes home/office combinations unique can also make them harder to sell when the time comes. So think twice before you make a major investment to redo your basement, your first floor or your garage as your new base of business.

First, most municipal zoning regulations sharply limit the kind and amount of business you can do at home.

Second, specialized and costly home business upgrades may not be a help -- and may even be a hindrance -- when it comes time to sell your home.

McGovern, for example, just recently put a $4,000 synthetic grass surface on the preschool's outdoor playground. It's not the kind of upgrade that will pay for itself upon resale, if the home reverts to just a residence.

Jeffrey Shapiro of Coldwell Banker is marketing a $999,000, five-bedroom colonial in Englewood with an attached six-room handicapped-accessible medical office and off-street parking for patients. He said it's not an easy sell.

"I initially went with the headline that this was a medical office or professional office, and home," Shapiro said. "But I switched gears and now I'm promoting it as a grand old home with a medical office attached."

He's done a lot of specialized marketing, printing up fliers on the house and office, and dropping them off in doctors' lounges in local and New York City hospitals.

But the lack of interest in the home as a home-based business prospect makes him think medical practitioners nowadays want to maintain their professional offices away from home.

Barry Colyer of Re/Max in Oakland has sold one home with an attached medical office a number of times.

"I sold a house on Ramapo Valley Road with a chiropractor's office on the lower level," he said. "The first time it sold to a doctor. The second time it just sold as a home office. The third time, the new owners tore it all out."