[scottmandue]

As I said in the title, pretty sure we are dead in the water so this is pretty much venting.
The house(s) I own now was once my brothers over thirty years ago.
He road the real estate wave and built enough $$ to buy a nice little beach house near the ocean rated for multiple units.
His plan was to build four condos, sell for one mil each and get rich.
Enter the neighborhood planing council (Not a HOA) and they are paranoid about parking/traffic problems so lobby the building department to down zone a bunch of properties.
My brothers was one of them.
As you might imagine he was livid... and decided to build (with a permit) a garage and storage unit over it on the back of the lot. The upstairs 'storage unit' was plumbed for bathrooms and kitchen and got permitted as a 'storage unit'.
Brother got sick of fighting with the building department (trying to rezone to a double unit) and eventually sold the property to my dad.
Dad rented the front house and used the back unit for storage and as a hobby area (no drywall, no bathroom, no kitchen)
After about ten years dad got tired of putting up with troublesome renters in the front house and fighting with the building department for a rezone so sold the place to me.
A few more years pass I decide why the heck am I not living in the back house with it's beautiful view of the oceans?
So install drywall, bathroom, kitchen.
Now we would like to start the year off new with a refinance... and you guessed it... the bank is saying "property is not zoned correctly can't give you a loan."
Even if we could get a rezone chances are we would have to get permits and inspections... and the inspectors could ask us to rip all the walls out... which would negate any advantage of getting a refinance.

Sorry, just need to vent... my wife pushed to try to do this but I knew we would get shot down (my family has been trying to fix this for over thirty years and my dad and brother were very strong willed. intelligent, and resourceful men, if they couldn't get it done it most likely couldn't be done)

Happy new year!