The value of your house is greatly influenced by where it is located, but FAR also plays a big factor. The good news is that if you are in Greenwich, you are already in a premium location. Good schools, good government, good amenities, low property tax rates and low crime all add up so that buyers are willing to pay a location premium to live here. Within town certain areas have greater competition from buyers.
Old Greenwich with Greenwich Point, Binney Park, the beautiful village, the Perrott Library and its own train station mean that buyers are willing to pay a premium to live there as supply doesn’t’ match demand. (Of course, with our very low inventory, you can say that about every part of town.)
This heightened demand means builders can sell bigger houses on the same size lot and that owners want to expand their houses when they are already in the location they want. This desire is not recent and is one of the major factors that led to the creation of zoning regulations. These regs came to Greenwich in the second half of the last century, in what we might call Zoning 1.0.
Zoning 1.0 is what you see in most towns where the town is divided into multiple zones. In Greenwich, we have seven residential zones that run from roughly a sixth of an acre all the way up to, a unique for Connecticut, 4-acre zone. Within each zone, there is a building envelope that is bigger or smaller depending on the zone. This envelope consists of front, back and side yard setbacks and height limitations.
In Zoning 1.0, you can pretty much do what you want within that envelope. The problem is that our builders and homeowners did just that. As a result, houses were built out to the edge of the setbacks. Some houses were built with flat roofs to take maximum advantage of the height limitation.
In the 1980’s, a series of larger houses were built along Lockwood Road in Old Greenwich, a narrow road dating from colonial times. These large houses were changing the character of the neighborhood and many long-term residents were concerned. Planning & Zoning, went to Zoning 2.0 in 1989, whose main feature was a floor area ratio limitation on house size within each zone.
The idea was to make sure that huge houses weren’t built on tiny lots and that house sized corresponded with the size of the lot. Each zone has its own floor area ratio, the bigger zone, the smaller the ratio. For example, the R-20 zone has a minimum lot size of 20,000 sf which is .46 acres. The floor area ratio for that zone is .225 which means when you apply that ratio to a 20,000 square-foot lot you can build a house of 4500 sf. It also means that if your lot is bigger or smaller than the minimum lot size, that the size of the house can be bigger or smaller. This is unlike the setback requirements in a zone, where the setback is the same regardless of the size of the lot (with a couple of exceptions.)
| Zone | Min Acres | Lot s.f. | FAR | Max Size |
| R-6 | 0.17 | 7,500 | 0.55 | 4,125 |
| R-7 | 0.17 | 7,500 | 0.35 | 2,625 |
| R-12 | 0.28 | 12,000 | 0.315 | 3,780 |
| R-20 | 0.46 | 20,000 | 0.225 | 4,500 |
| RA-1 | 1.00 | 43,560 | 0.135 | 5,881 |
| RA-2 | 2.00 | 87,120 | 0.09 | 7,841 |
| RA-4 | 4.00 | 174,240 | 0.0625 | 10,890 |
Now, the FAR concept seems fairly simple and straightforward. However, since 1989 a combination of creative architects and interpretations and amendments by planning and zoning have led to a very complex set of interpretations and some unforeseen consequences when the regs were originally passed.
Two of the principal issues that developed over the years had to do with attics and basements. The FAR limitation doesn’t apply if the space is underground or if the attic is unfinished then the space doesn’t count as floor area for the calculation. Greenwich, however, is not Iowa, and we have lots of hills and streams and lots that were created decades and centuries before zoning was even conceived. During the boom times of the early digits many architects were pushing houses to the absolute limit and came up with ways to get additional square footage that wouldn’t be counted in the 2.0 version of the floor area ratio regulations.
Basements were always problematic as Greenwich has a lot of lots with a lot of slopes. What might be a basement from the front of the house might be the first floor from the back of the house, the so-called walkout basement. If it is a true walkout basement, where the basement floor is at ground level, then it was counted in the floor area calculation.
You could have two identical houses with significantly different floor areas. The house on the hill had three floors counted for square footage, with its ground level walk-out basement or more properly, it’s lower level. The identical house next-door that was on a flat lot only had the two floors above ground counted, while the below ground basement didn’t count in the FAR calculation for that lot. (This a principal reason why you should always check the square footage on the tax card. It may or may not include the basement/lower level and “attic” space. This means that price per s.f. varies dramatically for similar houses.)
One option to get more square footage that was initially within the regs was to bring in dirt and build up the lot so that the ground level, the grade plane, put the lowest house level underground and hence was not counted in the FAR.
This strategy is called wedding caking since there may be several tiers created from the property edge to the house. We a couple of notable examples of wedding caking, where once the land was built up the first story of the new house looked into the second story bedrooms of the neighboring house. To combat this tactic new regulations were adopted, that limited wedding caking.
With attics, there was a different issue. Homeowners and builders would get a C.O. for the property with a square footage on the living floors that was very close to the absolute maximum allowed for that zone. The attic would be left unfinished and hence wouldn’t be counted in the FAR. Some people would subsequently finish off the attic with additional living space so that the house now exceeded the floor area ratio. To combat this after-the-fact, unauthorized expansion, planning and zoning required that trusses be interlaced in the attic leaving a rat’s nest of wooden beams that made it impossible to use the attic even for storage and also made fighting an attic fire very difficult.
Planning and zoning to their credit, generally tries to stay out of regulating the inside of houses. The issue is what impact a new house, or an addition or an old, has on its neighbors not what is being done inside the house. They adopted the 2.1 version of the regs limiting wedding caking and allowing finished attic space to be excluded from the house’s FAR, provided the attic was less than 40% of the floor below or 50% in our larger zones.
In addition to the FAR, we also have a GAR, or green area requirement. The GAR is designed to keep most of a lot as a green area. The GAR came about because people were putting in lots of outdoor amenities, such as pools with big decks, driveways with lots of parking areas, basketball courts and tennis courts.
The ratios for the green area requirement vary from a 35% green area required in the smallest zone to 84% of the lot having to be left with natural surfaces in the 4-acre zone. This means that only 16% of the lot can be covered in the 4-acre zone or only 0.64 acres of the 4 acres. As with FAR, it means that larger lots can cover more square feet with amenities and undersized lots are restricted more.
| Zone | GAR | Lot Coverage | Lot Cov. SF | Lot Cov. Ac. |
| R-6 | 35% | 65% | 4,875 | 0.11 |
| R-7 | 50% | 50% | 3,750 | 0.09 |
| R-12 | 55% | 45% | 5,400 | 0.12 |
| R-20 | 62% | 38% | 7,600 | 0.17 |
| RA-1 | 72% | 28% | 12,197 | 0.28 |
| RA-2 | 78% | 22% | 19,166 | 0.44 |
| RA-4 | 84% | 16% | 27,878 | 0.64 |
In addition to these regulations that touch every homeowner, we have flood plain regulations, inland wetlands regulations and an expanded drainage manual that substantially restricts lot use and can raise the cost of the development and limit what can built. At the same time, they also prevent a huge house from being built next door to you and make sure that water runoff from the new construction doesn’t flood your property.
Available FAR is a valuable commodity in Greenwich. If the FAR is maxed out, then buyers who want to add another bedroom may find that they can’t do so and are likely to move on to another house. However, there may be solutions that a knowledgeable architect can come up with.
Recently, a house in Cos Cob was expanded by changing the garage into a carport. The additional FAR freed up by removing the enclosed garage allowed for a nice addition. Attics and basements generally aren’t counted in the FAR so they can be finished and almost always are in new construction. We are actually seeing some buyers, digging a basement under an existing house. Bay windows are another way of making a room feel bigger without adding floor space.
Knowing how much available FAR there is, is crucial when trying to determine the value of a house in Greenwich.
