Hey, new to the forums, hoping find other property owners in Seattle that might have thoughts like my own.
I have a small house on a large lot in a Seattle neighborhood that is currently zoned "single family 5000". This is a corner lot and the house footprint sits on one side -- there is plenty of room for a second house here -- and in fact -- many lots in the neighborhood are exactly half the size of mine -- and have one house on each lot.
I've always wanted to subdivide the lot, and sell half, and keep the other half, but the city tells me I can not because the resulting lot sizes would be below the 5000 sf minimum -- it doesn't matter than 80% of the lots in the neighborhood are already under that size, they are all grandfathered in because they were established as lots before the sf5000 rule. I've spoken to the city land planning dept a number of times over the years, and spoken to a couple of real estate attorneys, and everybody else I can think of, and looked at all of the known variances, and haven't found any way to divide under today's zoning rules (I'm very close, but just under the required sf size -- and my single neighbor will not sell any of their property to get me over the minimum limit). I really have no option other than waiting for the day that Seattle realizes it will have to allow more density in order to meet the extreme demand it has for housing.
Everybody I know in the fields of real estate, urban planning, architecture, Washington state environmental planning, etc, all believe Seattle will eventually get to denser zoning for single family neighborhoods -- it is just a matter of time -- which could still be 10 - 20 years away.
I'm tired of waiting and looking to help jump start the process. I've been somewhat active in the neighborhood community council, have contacted area bloggers that are pro density, but I still see this being a long battle given the entrenched old time Seattle home owners that love their neighborhoods of extremely large lots and do whatever they can to prevent smaller lots in their 'hood.
Unfortunately, the city also had a recent backlash against developers that were building large & tall houses on tiny lots they were creating by searching through old lot/plat records, and I fear that this sweeping response to that has hurt all short-term effort, for more density in single family neighborhoods.
My one viable option today -- which I'm not a fan of -- is that I could build what the city calls a backyard cottage, and I could then rent that out (or live in it and rent out the main house), but I'm not all that interested in being a landlord. I'm really interested in just selling half -- pocketing that profit -- and living in a modest house on one of the resulting smaller lots, which in turn would reduce the real-estate portion of my total net worth (and reduce, by half, the size of yard I maintain).
My other thought, is that I could find an investor that wants to own 1/2 of this property, and basically share it -- I get one structure, the investor gets the other -- but this seems very complex and risky.
Curious what other Seattle land/home owners have done or thought of?