Zero lot line homes

A

abcd1234

New member
I have never experienced zero-lot lines until I moved to California.  When I was looking at buying a house, I never thought of the issues one might have if you purchased such a home. 

If you have a zero-lot line house, what are the conditions to build onto your house?

I rented a house in Irvine (single-level) and I lived next to a huge house that was easily over 4000 sq feet.  The owner of my rental was telling me that they had issues with this neighbor when the neighbor wanted to build a second story and put a window on the second story addition that is technically on the zero lot line.  That would make it easy for the big house neighbor to look into my rental yard.  The owners put a stop to that and the big house neighbors could not put windows on the zero lot line side of the second-story addition.

So- another scenario:  If a neighbor has a single-level home and part of the neighbor's house (garage wall+part of the house) is the "fence" of the next-door house (with regular fencing finishing off the house borders), what can the person with the single-level home do in terms of expanding the house?

In other words, if you have a zero-lot line house (single level) with brick fencing separating most of the house boundaries with part of the neighbor's house wall being part of the "fence" (like you see in Woodbridge or Turtle Rock), can the neighbor expand their house "out" as well as "up" on the zero lot line?  This would entail breaking down the brick fence wall separating the houses. 

 
This would probably be in the CC&Rs for the HOA and would differ by HOA.

I have a question:

Does insurance change for zero lot line homes or is that part of a higher cost HOA which has to have additional insurance similar to condos because of shared walls/space (although Sonoma in Woodbury does not have a 2nd HOA)?

I would think we would have an insurance person as one of our members by now.
 
abcd1234 said:
I have never experienced zero-lot lines until I moved to California.  When I was looking at buying a house, I never thought of the issues one might have if you purchased such a home. 

If you have a zero-lot line house, what are the conditions to build onto your house?

I rented a house in Irvine (single-level) and I lived next to a huge house that was easily over 4000 sq feet.  The owner of my rental was telling me that they had issues with this neighbor when the neighbor wanted to build a second story and put a window on the second story addition that is technically on the zero lot line.  That would make it easy for the big house neighbor to look into my rental yard.  The owners put a stop to that and the big house neighbors could not put windows on the zero lot line side of the second-story addition.

So- another scenario:  If a neighbor has a single-level home and part of the neighbor's house (garage wall+part of the house) is the "fence" of the next-door house (with regular fencing finishing off the house borders), what can the person with the single-level home do in terms of expanding the house?

In other words, if you have a zero-lot line house (single level) with brick fencing separating most of the house boundaries with part of the neighbor's house wall being part of the "fence" (like you see in Woodbridge or Turtle Rock), can the neighbor expand their house "out" as well as "up" on the zero lot line?  This would entail breaking down the brick fence wall separating the houses. 
Click to expand...

Like irvinehomeowner said, you need to look at the CC&R's.  You also need to check with the City rules on zero lot line for your tract and the set back requirements.
When I had a house in Irvine, the city rules for my tract (Westpark) was that you had to have a 5 ft. set back from your actual property line (not physical fenced/wall property line) on the sides and you have to have a minimum 15 foot set back from the back wall of your house to the back wall of the property.  There was one exception, if your house backed to a 'highway' (2 lane or greater road in each direction) you had to have a 40 ft. set back from the back of your house to the curb of the road.  So depending on how wide the road greenbelt was, you could build out more (or less) than the 15 ft. limitation of other houses not backing to a highway. 
 
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