backyard cottage seattle
Thinking about the long-term use of a home and designing for flexibilityis an important part of preparing for an uncertain future. DADUs allow people more flexibility to accommodate a growing family, changing work requirements, and to provide supplemental rental income. DADUs also provide valuable small housing stock in desirable neighborhoods.
Do you want to learn more about DADUs and meet others (virtually) thinking about building a DADU? Join Bruce Parker from Microhouse and Stefan Hansmire from Hansmire Builders to learn about what is possible in this unique webinar sponsored by Sustainable Ballard. In this workshop we will answer questions for people planning to build a backyard cottage, including explanations of what is possible given the new zoning rules. We will also discuss budget ranges for recently completed backyard cottages and financing options along with case studies.
Choosing to build a backyard cottage is an important long term decision. A good first question to ask when making that decision is how will I establish a budget for the cottage? While it may be hard to put a value on how a well designed home makes you feel or the value of having a family member living nearby, some qualities are easier to asses. If that family member is an aging parent who would otherwise be living in an assisted living facility, it is relatively easy to look at the costs of local facilities. For others building a new cottage may be less expensive than remodeling their existing house to more closely meet their needs. For example, new cottages can incorporate universal design components to assist those with mobility impairments.
Mykabin Launches In Seattle
Many people plan to use their cottages to generate rental income. In this case, a careful consideration of the rents in your area and anticipated costs can help you establish a budget range. And increasingly people are using condominium agreements to sell DADUs separately from the primary residence. These are five recent condominium sales of DADUs in Seattle.
In the past real estate appraisers have struggled with how to value backyard cottages and other ADU's primarily because there were simply not enough comparable sales to serve as a guide. With the sales of DADUs as condominiums and the sale of houses with houses becoming more common that task is getting easier.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Seattle Adu Fair last Saturday. It was great to meet so many of you in person.
Greenwood Modular Backyard Cottage
We've fielded a lot of questions about Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI)'s permitting times and how pre-approved plans for DADUs may affect them. To answer these questions, we have been crunching the numbers. The good news - there's been significant improvement since DADUs were given a high priority this fall, reducing the amount of review and processing time to get a construction permit by 50% from this time last year.
Fact sheet states that pre-approved plans can receive a building permit in 2-6 weeks (pre-approved or standard plans have already been reviewed for ordinance, structural (O/S) and energy). The city's hope is that by having these reviews completed beforehand, permit review times will go down - which seems logical but unfortunately doesn't align with our experience which indicates the O/S and Energy reviews are not driving overall permit approval times.
To analyze this, we reviewed permit histories from similar DADUs both recently permitted (indicated in gray) and those from this time last year (indicated in yellow) to see what was driving permit timelines. In the nine projects we examined, the O/S and Energy reviews only increased permitting time twice. And in those instances the delay was minor averaging only 3 days.
Seattle Backyard Cottage (dadu)
The EIS finds that the most significant way to reduce tear-downs (i.e the removal of naturally occurring affordable housing) will occur by introducing a floor area ratio (FAR) limit. Currently the size of new houses is limited by setbacks and height limits. The trend in new construction is for very large houses (with correspondingly large price tags), which are typically beyond the means of median income earners. The FAR limit would reduce the size of what can be built but exclude ADUs and DADUs from the restriction. The goal being to prevent tear-downs and to encourage rather the construction of ADUs and DADUs.
The City Council held a public hearing to discuss these proposed changes on Tuesday, June 11th at 5:30pm in council chambers. Discussion and potential vote on the amendments and proposed legislation will be held on June 28th at 2:00pm.
Bruce Parker, a Seattle Architect specializing in backyard cottages, discusses the high home prices, city legalities, and the potential benefits of building a small house on your land.
Will Easing The Rules For Backyard Cottages Help Or Hurt Seattle Livability?
Colette and Chris built this backyard cottage as a short term rental. Their cottage cottage takes advantage of the sloping site to create a unique three level design. It features a generous master suite, a living room with vaulted ceilings and an 2nd bedroom/office on the top floor. 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathrooms. The cottage will be open Friday September 21st from 4:30 to 7:00 pm. Email info@ for more information.
The owner built this backyard cottage as a rental but fell in love (with the cottage) during the design process and decided to rent out his house instead.
This backyard cottage features an open floor plan on the ground floor with a kitchen, living and powder rooms that open with accordion doors onto a patio with a gas fireplace. Upstairs is a master bedroom complete with a kitchenette, and a bath with laundry room. The overall strategy with this backyard cottage, as it is with most of our designs, is to keep the structure simple allowing a larger percentage of the budget to be spent on finishes.The height and size of DADUs is limited based on the size of the lot. This lot was particularly small limiting the allowable footprint to 294 sq. ft
Seattle's Custom Backyard Cottages
A movable kitchen island is the perfect accessory to the compact kitchen. Exposed wood joists add warmth and texture in contrast with the concrete floors. The joists were spaced to accommodate the owner's weight lifting rack.
Where some houses may come with a man cave this DADU features a "man wall" with big screen
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