House Bill 248 creates an exemption in the North Carolina Building Code for certain owner-occupied, single-family homes that contain a permitted home business. Under the bill, a dwelling used as the owner’s primary residence would remain classified as a single-family residence, and the presence of a qualifying home business would not by itself trigger live/work, mixed-use, or commercial occupancy requirements. The bill defines key terms such as “home business use,” “owner-occupied,” and “single-family dwelling,” and limits the exemption to businesses operated directly by the owner-occupant rather than leased to a third party.
The exemption applies only if the home business is allowed under local zoning and otherwise lawful. If the dwelling stops meeting those conditions, the exemption ends automatically and the property becomes subject to any applicable occupancy classification and code requirements. The bill also directs the Building Code Council and Residential Code Council to adopt permanent rules consistent with the act, and it provides that the temporary statutory exemption will sunset once those rules take effect.
HB248 would narrow the circumstances under which a home-based business in an owner-occupied single-family dwelling is treated as a live/work, commercial, or mixed-occupancy use under state building regulations. It would prevent additional construction, fire-safety, or structural requirements from being imposed solely because the homeowner operates a qualifying business from the residence, while leaving intact all other residential code requirements, local zoning authority, private covenants, and applicable state and federal licensing, health, safety, and environmental laws. The bill would also require conforming rulemaking by the Building Code Council and Residential Code Council and would apply to existing and future qualifying homes once enacted.
The available context suggests the bill is generally pro-home-business and deregulatory in tone, aiming to reduce code barriers for small businesses run from the owner’s home. No committee transcript or recorded vote is provided, so there is no documented formal debate or roll-call sentiment in the materials supplied. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears designed to be practical and narrowly tailored rather than expansive, with multiple carveouts to preserve local and private restrictions.
The main points of potential contention are the bill’s preemption of local ordinances and its limitation on when a home business can trigger building-code reclassification. Local governments may view the measure as restricting their ability to impose stricter construction, fire-safety, or occupancy standards on home-based businesses, even though the bill preserves zoning and police powers for hazardous or unlawful uses. Another possible area of concern is the interaction with homeowners’ association rules and private covenants, which the bill expressly does not override, as well as the administrative requirement for the state code councils to adopt conforming rules on a set timeline.