Submitted by stricly_business t3_z1j8ta in Maine
My wife and I were thinking about getting some land away from the city to use as a little weekend getaway. We can't afford much of a cabin or permanent structure in the near future so we were looking into yurts, but the zoning laws are all over the place and hard to understand. Has anyone had success putting a yurt on some land without any issues?
If by "rural areas in Maine" you mean unorganized areas of Maine, then they are not construction free-for-alls. They operate under LUPC (formerly LURC).
Western Maine too.
True, but generally still a lot less restrictive than most towns that do have zoning.
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Even if you want to put it in a town that has zoning that disallows it, one can always get a variance if the local board is pliable.
It depends on where you are. There's definitely zoning though. Check out their site. They even have zoning maps. And then there are rules and regs for each of the zones. You know, just like a town.
My point is that you shouldn't tell someone that there are no laws when there are. You're gonna get them in trouble.
Lake or ocean
Really is town by town- some places count them as temporary structures, we looked into it in our town. They said as long as it wasn't within 200' of a waterway (that is, in a designated Special Resource Area- a legal term for where building restrictions are more, well... restrictive I guess is the best term- look for that language) and it was on a "movable" platform then it would be fine. Don't need to actually be able to move the platform easily, but it should be on skids or wheels with a hitching point. If its considered a 'permanent, immovable structure', then we needed permitting.
That said, getting a permit isn't the end of the world, its not costly and if you just say, I want to put a yurt on my property, they will probably be fine with it. There's no guarantees or absolutes when it comes to small town offices. They might want to you install some sort of outhouse system, but you will want one anyways.
I looked at a yurt, but they are not cheap, nor particularly expandable or a whole lot better than a $200 bell tent (IMHO). especially if you're heading towards a cabin in the future. It all depends on the land you get and how undeveloped it is, but in our case it started with access. We needed a driveway permit, which starts the dialog with the CEO. In fact, as soon as you buy the land, you'll be interacting with the town folks over things like taxes. You can probably scoot by a few years "camping" for weekend getaways (we did, with a 16ft bell tent+cots) , but pretty quickly there will be questions about how you're handling the waste water disposal situation.
Exactly. A yurt will cost you much more then a cabin or camper.
Pretty sure I didn't say it was lawless. It's just not Southern Maine. In my town I could put up a building such as a garage or shed and not ask any permissions. My point was that there is much of the state you can set your yurt and not ask permission. Of course waterfront and septic issues would apply.
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I don't live in a town so I'm under lupc. There are trees I can't cut down and there is no way I could build a garage without a massive pile of red tape. I'm in western Maine.
Edit: you did imply there's no zoning.
Thanks for the tip! I will look into this option.
Nice! Thanks for sharing your experience. We'll definitely reach out to the town. We just wanted to make sure it is possible some places.
Good tip! Thanks for sharing.
Maine recently passed a (very brief) tiny house law. One bit said that cities & towns cannot make laws more restrictive than the state law, and another says that a town can't inspect a tiny house within the first six months. I don't know if the law has been modified, but you could call it a tiny house.
Nice! Good old Maine looking out for the little guys!
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This is great info, thanks for sharing! It would just be a weekend getaway for my wife and our kid, but we do want to make it spacious enough to be comfortable, so a 30 ft min sounds reason.
Lots of small towns have no zoning outside of the state mandated shoreland zoning, and septic permitting.
If you pick one of those towns just read their shoreland zoning laws, and pick a spot where you can legally build without needing to get planning board/code enforcement officer approval, and go for it. In the more rural areas of the state plenty of people have cheaper camps that are sheds, yurts, permanently parked campers, etc with no zoning issues.
Typically shoreland zoning covers 250ft to great ponds (10+ acres), and 100ft from streams/small ponds. There are two basic model zoning plans that the system put out in the early 90's, and towns adopted one or the other with some changes, so it does vary from town to town. Inside the zone it can be possible to build, depending on exactly what you want to do, but it all requires permits and approvals.
If you want an outhouse it will require a Septic permit, and if you build in the shoreland zone mentioned above they will likely make you get at least a gray water leachfield permitted and built. Composting toilets, and other similar systems don't require a permit.
Wow this was extremely helpful, thanks for sharing! It sounds like a small town will be our best option. We'd like something near the south of the state to be close to home, so hopefully there are some towns down there that fit the bill. Time to do some research!
There are however, property prices tend to be pretty high down south. The further you get away from Boston/Portland the cheaper stuff gets. Once you get out of the weekend driving range of Boston prices drop off a cliff pretty quick.
There are waterfront camp lots in interior Washington County (vicinity of Rt 9) available for <$50k.
I've found that Landwatch.com can be a good way to find cheaper rural acreage. Generally lower priced listing don't get the full MLS treatment because of the cost of listing.
Unfortunately, we are one of those weekend city folks from Boston, so we are kinda forced to look down south. I'll definitely check out Landwatch.com - thanks for all the tips!
Hey I currently live in a yurt in a small town near Bangor. Space wise it was a lot cheaper than a similar sized cabin. It got permitted as a raised camping platform, really no issue with permitting. This is a small town with a really relaxed view on code enforcement though. We were told to start building, by the code enforcement guy, even before they had approved us.
If you have any questions or want any information I'd be glad to answer!
Not for the same amount of interior space. I compared both options and a yurt was far cheaper for the size.
Awesome! Sounds like raised camping permits are the way to go. Glad to hear it worked for you! Thanks for sharing!
jakey_P t1_ixbafmm wrote
Nah I usually put mine on the water