DADU Issues

Speaker 1: [0:09] Hello, hello, and welcome to the Awesome in Seattle podcast. My name is Christian Nossum.

Speaker 2: [0:15] I'm Charlotte Reynolds.

Speaker 3: [0:16] And I'm Jason Saldarriaga.

Speaker 1: [0:18] And we are the Awesome Nossum Group. We are a group of Seattle real estate agents that love to educate people about real estate in Seattle.

Speaker 3: [0:26] Among other things.

Speaker 1: [0:27] Yay. Boo-yah. So, um, first, before we get started, our, our topic today is about the new ADU and DADU legislation that just got passed last week and got signed into, uh, law by Mayor Durkan. But before we get into that, man, this last weekend has been, or last week really, has been crazy for us. Yeah. We've been slammed working nonstop. We did, uh, last Thursday we did a home buyer class, our Beers and Home Buying class at Stoup Brewing in Ballard, and we had over 50 people show up. Yeah, with

Speaker 3: [1:04] seats

Speaker 1: [1:05] for like 36.

Speaker 3: [1:06] Yeah.

Speaker 1: [1:07] It was crazy. Um, I don't know if we've ever had a class as packed as that, and we've had some packed classes in the past, but this was insane. That was a lot of people.

Speaker 2: [1:17] It was a good class, too, like a lot of interaction.

Speaker 1: [1:19] Yes.

Speaker 2: [1:20] People cracking jokes and stuff.

Speaker 1: [1:21] Exactly. It was really

Speaker 2: [1:21] fun.

Speaker 1: [1:22] They're always fun, but this one was especially fun. Yeah. Uh, and then on Saturday, we had our client appreciation party where we played bubble soccer, which was hilarious and fun. And if you don't know what the heck we're talking about, if you've seen those giant bubbles that you, like, squeeze the top half of your body into, and then you run around, 'cause your legs are exposed, but your head's covered, your arms are covered, your upper torso is basically covered in this ball. And then you run around and you bounce into people and you flip over and- you try to play soccer. And it was hilarious.

Speaker 2: [1:57] It is hard- It

Speaker 1: [1:58] is

Speaker 2: [1:58] super hard … to run in those things.

Speaker 1: [2:00] Yeah, and they're heavy.

Speaker 2: [2:01] They are so heavy. I was, like, propping it up with my leg the whole time. I can't hold this with my arms.

Speaker 1: [2:09] It was-

Speaker 3: [2:09] It was fun to watch, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: [2:10] Yeah. And the kids actually loved it. So every year we do a client appreciation party. We try to switch back and forth from an adult theme, which last year was a cocktail-making party, to this year being more family-friendly, uh, which obviously was bubble soccer, knockerball. Um, and it was fun. Um, I had a blast.

Speaker 3: [2:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1: [2:29] Those things get- That was a lot of fun

Speaker 3: [2:31] hot though. And then the next day we put on another party.

Speaker 1: [2:34] Yes, we did another one. That was a housewarming party for Anna and Shane in Phinney Ridge after we helped them buy that house. So it's been a busy few days. We haven't had a day off in a while, but-

Speaker 2: [2:45] But so fun.

Speaker 1: [2:46] It was so fun, and we ate so much cheese, Charlotte, mostly. And

Speaker 2: [2:49] cookies.

Speaker 1: [2:50] And cookies. Mm. And donut holes, and Euros from Aladdin Eurocery in the U District.

Speaker 2: [2:55] Yeah. So to sum it up, our parties are awesome.

Speaker 1: [2:57] Yeah, they are. They really are, and they're a lot of fun. So let's talk about that new legislation, the DADU and ADU legislation.

Speaker 3: [3:04] This is huge.

Speaker 1: [3:05] It's big news. Yes.

Speaker 2: [3:06] Yeah. It's pretty exciting.

Speaker 1: [3:08] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: [3:08] Um, so the new legislation that just passed will allow, um, a backyard cottage, AKA DADU, and a parent-in-law apartment, AKA ADU, um, on the same lot, whereas before the legislation, um, there was, uh, it was only allowed to have one or the other. Um, so the new rules are set to take effect on August 9th, and so just a little bit of history on the, um, ADUs and DADUs. They were banned in Seattle about 70 years ago, um, but parent-in-law apartments were again allowed across the city starting back in 1994, and the backyard cottages since 2010.

Speaker 1: [3:43] Yeah.

Speaker 2: [3:43] So, um, what's the difference? An ADU is, um, a An attached apartment to the house. Yeah. Um, typically they're gonna be in the basement. Um, and the DADU is a, um, detached, uh, so that'll be like a backyard cottage.

Speaker 1: [3:59] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: [4:00] And ADU stands for ac- accessory dwelling unit, so-

Speaker 1: [4:04] And DADU- Yeah … is just detached- Detached … accessory dwelling unit.

Speaker 3: [4:07] So you'll hear from here on out, you'll hear us say ADU or DADU. Mm-hmm. Um, ADU is

Speaker 1: [4:11] attached

Speaker 3: [4:14] and DADU is, uh- Detached detached, so just keep that in mind.

Speaker 1: [4:18] Yep. So-

Speaker 3: [4:19] It's more, it's more like a-a-DU. Attached acc- accessory-

Speaker 1: [4:23] Adu. Yeah.

Speaker 3: [4:24] And

Speaker 1: [4:25] Dadu. Yeah. Uh, so the new looser reg- regulations, among other things, allow a homeowner build both a basement apartment now and a backyard cottage on the same lot, rather than just one or the other. It removes the requirement that each unit must have off-street parking, which some people are gonna be mad about. I don't think there's gonna be enough cottages or, uh, ADUs added that this is really gonna have much of an impact, personally. Uh, but that's just me. Um, it reduces the minimum lot size from 4,000 square feet down to 3,200 square feet, and I think that's a bigger deal than most people are giving credit because there are quite a few, especially in these, uh, closer in, denser neighborhoods in Seattle, where there's homes that are on 3,200 square foot lots. The majority are on 4,000 or 5,000 square foot lots, but there are some on 3,200 square foot lots, so that'll help. Um, it allows backyard cottages to be up to 1,000 square feet now. That's surface square footage on the lot. Uh, and that's up from just 800 square feet in the past. Um, so ADUs were already capped at 1,000 square feet, so that's not really making any change there. Um, they're also now allowing DADUs to be built a few feet taller, which is really gonna help bring down the cost of these. They had them before really short, which made it hard to build more of a, a general s- construction style house in Seattle. Um, and so this will help, especially with our sloped lots in Seattle, to bring down the cost a little bit as well. In terms of where you can put them, they can't be any closer than five feet to the property line, unless it's on the alley. If you have an alley in your backyard, you can build it right up against the alley, which is great. Um, it also has to be at least five feet away from your house, the primary home on the house. And then lastly, it allows, uh, up to 12 unrelated people to live on the same lot within two acce- uh, accessory dwelling units, up from eight unrelated people. So that's, that might seem crazy that 12 people might live on a 3,200 square foot lot, but that's really not that abnormal. I mean, I own a duplex in Wallingford that, that eight or nine people live in right now. And- It's a huge house and I could now add a D-A-D-U, a dadu, in the backyard if I wanted to and, and have, you know, three or four more people live in that if I wanted to. But that'd be tight for 1,000 square feet, so.

Speaker 3: [7:00] Yeah, property owners with accessory units will no longer be required to live on site, um, and will no longer be required to provide off-street parking for the ADUs. Um, this was one of the things that really hung up the legislation over the last three or four years. It was proposed, like, four years ago, and this was one of the main things that really hung it up, this and the environmental impacts t- statement.

Speaker 1: [7:22] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: [7:23] Council member Li- Lisa Herbold, um, proposed that Seattle require a year of continuous ownership before allowing a second accessory unit to be built because they didn't want p- uh, people w- with money to come into neighborhoods, buy a property, and just br- uh, tear it down and build a new unit. They really want to encourage current owners to really be environmentally sound and increase the density of their own home. Mm-hmm. Um, fortunately, this provision was voted down seven to one, so. Yeah.

Speaker 1: [7:50] Thank goodness.

Speaker 3: [7:50] Um, but that was pretty recent.

Speaker 1: [7:52] The other thing

Speaker 3: [7:52] is

Speaker 1: [7:52] about McMansions. Uh- Yes … Charlotte, what are the, what are the new rules on that?

Speaker 2: [7:57] Well, so first of all- A McMansion is basically when somebody builds a giant house that takes up the full square footage really of the lot. Mm-hmm. So don't really have any yards. It kinda takes away a lot of the curb appeal in neighborhoods and things like that. Yep. So people typically are not for, um, the big McMansions. Um, so with this new legislation, um, it's been limited to, um… The, the new house size is limited to half of the square footage of the lot, uh, size. So for example, if you have a 6,000 square foot lot, the home size, um, is gonna be limited to 3,000 square feet of above ground living space. So this doesn't count basements. Um, it doesn't acc- uh, count for detached garages or, um, like an accessory dwelling unit, like a- Mm-hmm … a DADU.

Speaker 1: [8:42] Yep. So that's a big thing. I think that's where the people that were against this were, were mad. Uh, and so they added this into the bill to make it, uh, appease them, basically saying, "Hey, well, we're gonna add the availability to add a DADU to a lot, but we're gonna remove the fact that developers can no longer build these gigantic houses that are just eyesores and people generally don't like in the neighborhood." So that was kind of the trade-off.

Speaker 2: [9:10] Yeah, which again, will kind of contribute to what the whole point is here, to add-

Speaker 1: [9:14] Mm-hmm … Speaker 2: the, the density in those single family neighborhoods, rather than just being able to have these huge houses that really only accommodate for the one family anyways. Yep. So, um, a couple other sort of interesting tidbits here in terms of, you know, what's gonna happen with, um, these new rules. Um, so it could result p- in, you know, 4,430 accessory units to be built, um, and 1,580 houses torn down over the next 10 years, versus 1,970 accessory units built and 2,030 houses torn down under the status quo. Yeah. Um, so that- So like the old rules, basically we would've had more homes torn down, and- And less- less, way less accessory dwelling units added- Yep … versus these new rules.

Speaker 2: [10:02] Yeah. And to put that into respective, Seattle last year added 7,400 new housing units.

Speaker 1: [10:08] And this is… Those numbers that you just said before that were over a 10-year period.

Speaker 2: [10:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1: [10:13] So they're saying potentially up to 4,400 DADUs might be added. That's not a huge dent. This is not gonna solve our housing crisis in Seattle, but it might help a little bit. Yeah,

Speaker 3: [10:25] so- I mean,

Speaker 2: [10:25] it's a good step, uh, to at least try

Speaker 1: [10:27] to- Yeah … Speaker 2: you know, help, so.

Speaker 3: [10:28] I like, I like to compare the timeframe. So what they're saying is in one year they're expecting about 400 accessory, uh, units to be added- Mm-hmm to Seattle's inventory, as opposed to what we saw last year, we, we saw 7,400 units. So 400 of those theoretically would hopefully be, um, accessory-

Speaker 1: [10:48] Dwelling units … Speaker 3: dwelling n- units instead of a new apartment complex- Yep … or something of that sort. And this is all part of a, a conversation and a broader debate across the country. Um, I mean, Minneapolis just allowed triplexes to be built on any residential lot They just did that, uh, legislation last year. Oregon just passed a bill two weeks ago that allows duplexes on residential lots. It's something that's happening across the country in areas that are, uh, experiencing growth and want to add more people, but not be, uh, not add more sprawl, and that's what Seattle's always tried to

Speaker 3: [11:26] get away from. Yeah, it's always this give and take, right? Mm-hmm. We wanna encourage development. We have to accommodate for things, uh, for forces that are out of our control, these people moving in and that sort of thing. So y- but you wanna maintain the neighborhoods and, and what makes the special city, or the city special, so. Um, so yeah, it's not necessarily a, a cure-all, but it's definitely a step in many of the right directions. Mayor Durkan said that there is definitely still more work to be done. Um, one of the main things she wants to streamline is the construction permitting process. Um, the legislation doesn't explicitly make, um, these units cheaper to build. Right now, a basement apartment typically costs between 100,000 and 150,000. While-

Speaker 1: [12:11] Which that seems a little high to me. Yeah. I mean, depending on … I mean, if you have nothing in your basement right now, maybe that's when that costs that much. That even still seems high, but- And

Speaker 3: [12:19] you have to do some, uh, dig out some l-

Speaker 1: [12:21] Yeah, exactly uh, windows Dig out your, your windows, and maybe even heighten the, the ceiling height or something like that. But that seems pretty high to me, personally.

Speaker 3: [12:29] Yeah, and backyard cottages are sometimes north of 300,000, depending on what you're building. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, the goal … I know Mayor Durkan, when she signed the legislation, she's, there, it's posted on YouTube if you wanna see this, but she, um, she discussed wanting to get the approval process from one year, which it currently stands at, because there's just so many layers to the permitting process. Mm-hmm. She wants to streamline it and get it down to 30 days- Yeah … to really encourage homeowners, you know, to s- look, this is a great option. You can add a unit to your current property. You know, there, there's options here, so. And

Speaker 1: [13:03] I see this too as, I mean, there's a lot of people that are against this whole thing because they want fair housing. I actually think this is adding more affordable housing to people. One, let's think of it from buyers buying a home. If you have a house and it has a detached unit on it already, say you do this in five years or something, you buy it and it's already there You now can, can decrease your mortgage cost by however much the rent is that you're generating from that detached unit, and you're able to basically afford this house where you probably wouldn't be able to afford it if that detached unit wasn't there. So I see this as actually helping, uh, home ownership in the future. I also see this as adding more lower cost, uh, rental units available across the city as well, not just in giant apartment complexes, but in, in the single family neighborhoods. Um, and I also see this helping a lot of families. Uh, there's a lot of older people that are, you know, downsizing and trying to get into a single level home. No upstairs, no downstairs, no steps, and that's generally what these detached units are, and I could see that, uh, helping people that maybe wanna even stay in their neighborhood. Maybe they've lived in a ran- or in a, in a two-story house or a house with a basement for 40 years. They don't wanna move 'cause they don't wanna uproot their entire community. They wanna stay in their neighborhood, so they now build a detached unit. They move into that. They rent out their main house. Like, that kind of stuff is happening. This is not, this is not, uh, some giant new thing. It's, it's, it's gonna help neighborhoods, in my opinion, in Seattle. So

Speaker 3: [14:54] that's definitely the goal here. Yeah. And we see this with people, with clients all the time looking at properties. You know, I show a lot of stuff in Ballard, for example, and it's maybe a single family detached home, or it's like a detached town home. Mm-hmm. And you have this really nice little view, and you look at the houses nearby, and they might be older.

Speaker 1: [15:12] Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: [15:13] And the first question in e- all of the buyers that I represent, the first question they have is, "What's gonna happen with all these other houses?" Mm-hmm. "They're gonna tear them down and build townhouses, and then what is that impact gonna have on my views on my, on this unit?" Um-

Speaker 1: [15:27] On my community, on my neighborhood too. Yep.

Speaker 3: [15:30] And so, you know, we see this just on the ground constantly and, and, uh, encouraging not the demolition, but the addition of- Yep … a unit to a property, I think, uh, is definitely a step in the right direction for that.

Speaker 1: [15:42] I totally agree.

Speaker 2: [15:43] Yep.

Speaker 1: [15:44] Yeah. All right. Well, that's it. Thank you, both of you, for joining me today as always, and, uh, thanks everyone for listening. If you like this, please subscribe and leave some comments. Let us know what you think. Thanks a lot. Talk to you next time.

Speaker 3: [15:57] Adios. Bye.

Speaker 2: [15:58] Thank you.