Worried about neighbours? Buyer beware
Published Saturday August 9th, 2008
It pays to check zonings in your neighbourhood before you buy that house
When you buy that dream home, you make sure a lawyer, a house inspector and your realtor look in great detail at the property, but who looks around the neighbourhood at the other properties that might affect your investment and your quality of life? As Metro Moncton residents have learned time and time again, it needs to be done by the prospective homeowners themselves.
They need to take the time to look at a community's zoning map, browse a municipality's municipal development plan and look at development trends around them.
This week, close to 30 residents of the Muirfield Drive and Sunshine Drive area went to a meeting of the Greater Moncton Planning District Commission to express their concerns about the construction of the new Casino New Brunswick, which will literally be in many of their backyards.
However, unless you are morally opposed to gaming, there could be far worse neighbours.
The casino's builders have already made a number of concessions to residents to minimize both the impacts of the construction of the complex and the operation of it, and the talks continue.
As well, though casinos often equal crime in the public consciousness, if you visit a number of casino operations across the country, the first thing you notice is how surprisingly quiet tight security and a highly regulated industry can make them on the outside.
The typical casino of the scope being built in Moncton is so far from the sort of thing you would find in Las Vegas or even ultra-touristy Niagara Falls, it's difficult to even lump them in the same sentence.
A homeowner can pretty much count on less hassles and disturbances living next to a casino than a public school, but that's not to say anyone necessarily wants either as a neighbour.
However, there are indeed potential neighbours who might be equally undesirable. As Bill Budd, the planning commission's executive director, noted Thursday night, the land is zoned Highway Commercial, opening it up to a multitude of potential uses. Residents could find themselves looking at the back loading docks and trucks of a large retail development or listening to 18 wheelers idling all night at a truck stop.
The land could house mini-storage or a crematorium or a half dozen fast food restaurants and their drive-thrus. As long as there are no strippers on-site, the land is zoned to potentially hold New Brunswick's largest nightclub, which would be unlikely to have a fraction of the security seen at casinos.
And as Budd noted, if the land was developed in separate parcels instead of as one whole subdivision as is being done in this instance, the developers would not be required to provide land for public purposes.
That legal requirement of a subdivision plan means Casino New Brunswick has to provide land to accommodate a treed buffer between the development and its neighbours. A decision by the developer means the buffer will be 50 per cent wider than required by law, but if the land was not being developed as a subdivision, there would be no legal requirement to provide anything more than a fence at the edge of the property.
So how was it so many people made the most significant investments of their lives so close to land with such an uncertain future?
One veteran Moncton realtor says it's quite common for home buyers to look carefully at a property itself and size up the character of its immediate surroundings, but not always see the bigger picture development issues.
Brian Lekas of Coldwell Banker Realty in Moncton said that's where professionals in his occupation have a role to play, particularly because this sort of information gathering is outside the mandate of the lawyers most of us hire to conduct a real estate transaction.
"It behooves me to advise clients of anything I know about which might affect their property values," Lekas said. "There's an obligation as a professional to do that."
Lekas said it's not always possible to keep up with developments in every neighbourhood, but if a client thinks to ask about it, realtors can usually make some inquiries.
"As realtors, we have resources that our clients don't always have."
However, as is the case in the land being used for the casino, the fact that it has had a commercial designation for at least a decade or more can be found by average citizens on the City of Moncton website under the city's bylaws.
The city's 176-page municipal plan, which lays out in often quite specific detail how the city plans to channel development in the coming years, is Bylaw Z-102. The 94 page description of Moncton's building zones and the regulations surrounding them are Bylaw Z-202.
If that all sounds a bit overwhelming, even for someone contemplating a six figure investment, a one page amendment to the zoning bylaw might just tell you everything you need to know. That's a colour-coded map showing the zonings of every property in the city. If that vacant lot behind that pretty little Cape Cod you're eyeing is designated Highway Commercial (HC) or Suburban Commercial (SC), you might want to think about what sort of neighbours you can live with.
It's often fairly obvious that your neighbourhood might never become home to a nightclub or amusement park or pawn shop, but in recent years residents have occasionally found themselves at city hall upset about Multiple Unit (MU) zonings in their neighbourhoods. If the prospect of neighbours on apartment building balconies looking down into your backyard alarms you, MU designations are the ones to watch out for.
That was true of residents in the Grant Street and Fairview Knoll area of Moncton last year, and the same folks who are upset about a casino to their north may not be happy to see much of the land to their southeast, in the area of Glad Tidings Pentecostal and Hillside Baptist churches, is planned for apartment buildings.
For those not on-line, zoning information is also available at Moncton city hall. By law, all New Brunswick communities have municipal development plans and other information available to help home buyers be aware. It may not pay to do a little homework and think about the future, but there's a good chance it might save.
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