For those of you that subscribe to my channel.
You know that I put out a new video every other Friday,
but I just put out a video last week. So what am I doing here? Well,
this month I have a bonus video for you as a followup to last week's video.
I interviewed an architect that specializes in backyard cottages in Seattle.
Backyard cottages are becoming more and more popular as a solution for
alternative housing and also as a way to make extra income.
So we're going to take a detailed look at the benefits and challenges of
building a backyard cottage in the city.
My name is Bruce Parker and I specialize in design of backyard cottages.
The cost of housing in Seattle is very high.
It's increased very quickly, certainly since the recession. And you know,
of course Amazon has increased their footprint in Seattle,
but that's not the only reason that Seattle is a desirable places.
And expensive place to live.
When I started out in 2009 is when the city went citywide with the backyard
cottage ordinance that allowed people to build backyard cottages.
And since that time people had been doing it and increasing numbers.
But when I started out,
people mostly built for a family member an aging parent,
a couple of siblings with disabilities where they wanted some independence but
they needed to be close.
And at that point there was probably maybe 10 or 20% of people were building
thinking, as a rental possibility. And uh,
since that time it's almost reversed. And now it's almost, uh, you know,
20% building for a family member and maybe the 80% building as a rental.
People use them different ways over time and they plan it that way. So like,
well,
we're gonna use it short term rental now eventually mom's gonna move into the
backyard. Maybe later we're going to retire,
we're going to move into the cottage and rent out the house.
Now in the city there's, I think 500 some odd cottages that have been built.
The city is talking about changing the ordinance for backyard cottages to
encourage more construction and trying to make a little more family friendly by
increasing the size and the height limits.
And then there's a couple of controversial ones like the
which has been kind of a standard, but Portland got rid of theirs
and because of that and some other changes,
they've seen an increase in number backyard cottages.
So the city from a policy standpoint views backyard cottage as being awesome
because they're increasing density and and providing what they consider more
options for families, which they definitely are.
There's a lot of complexity in Landis' code and it's,
it's not intentional complexity, but they're just
trying to make it work and have rules that
everybody can follow. It just, it ends up being kind of complicated.
Paul and Caroline had a number of interesting things.
One is that they were converting an existing garage that had a shared wall with
their neighbors,
so that was the first hurdle because the neighbor who was very enthusiastic about the
project at the beginning,
Once the project got started and he had to sign a release saying that it was
okay to demolish Paul and Caroline's half of the garage, he refused to sign it.
So it probably held up the project, I mean six months.
That was kind of a long slog.
And then beyond that we're trying to maximize what we can,
getting everything, getting the most lot coverage.
So there's a lot of things that are regulated by the city that we just kind of
ended up kind of juggling around playing with.
There's a lot of things that you kind of look at the house and you think,
I wonder why they did that? And there's,
there's a lot of things that were done that way because of the land use code.
It is difficult to work with the city in a way,
but on the other hand it's just a big bureaucracy.
So as long as you follow the rules and you understand the rules,
there's a lot of opportunity there.
But it certainly seems daunting and it often doesn't make sense.
And it certainly doesn't make sense if you look at it from the outside.
But once you've been working with it for a long time,
you kind of understand the intent and usually there's,
there's good solutions to problems. It just might take some patients
building a more costs, more building, less costs, a little bit less,
but there's a lot of getting out of ground costs. So, um, I have a project, um,
that's a three bedroom, four bedroom house with three baths.
The construction budget for that is $500,000. So,
and inevitably it will probably increase a little bit on that.
But so backyard cottage at 800 square feet for $300,000 is a pretty expensive
proposition.
But that's not an uncommon cost of construction for backyard cottages. I mean,
I think one of the things that's helped offset that,
of course the rental prices have increased dramatically.
They're still profitable for people to build them,
but it's certainly less so than it used to be because rents have not increased
as fast as construction costs over the last, certainly since the recession,
we can cost less. Some people do some of their labor. I mean,
Paul built his cottage for much less than that,
but he of course did all the labor himself.
He was very resourceful in finding reclaimed materials and things like that.
It's not necessarily affordable
housing is providing an additional housing option and it's a particularly good
option for a lot of families.
Maybe you have a grandparent that you know would love to live nearby.
The can't afford to live in Seattle. You know, it's like I moved from Florida,
we had a swimming pool, you know,
I can't even afford to build an 800 square foot house, so,
or to buy a condo or something like that. It's expensive,
but it's less expensive than buying a house. And then later it can cycle.
And maybe the kids when they're going to college, maybe they live in a cottage,
but it's,
it's providing housing and you could argue that they be living somewhere else if
they weren't living there. And it's,
it's a neat for families to give them that flexibility to have way two smaller
houses instead of a big house that's maybe sitting or
being underutilized for, for a lot of the time.
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