A few weeks ago Stranger writer Charles Mudede published a post in which he argued that “Seattle Is Pretty Much Game Over” in terms of housing affordability. There was a time when something could have been done to avoid its entry into the locked cycle of asset value inflation, but that was a few years…
Tag: density
Mayor’s Affordability Committee Releases Tepid Growth Recommendations
As a follow-up to this morning’s post about the future of single-family housing in Seattle, here’s the final report from the Mayor’s “Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory Committee”: Seattle Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (pdf) There are a few relevant portions of the report that address single-family zoning. From page 21 of the report: MF.1…
Seattle Preparing to Say Goodbye to Single-Family Zoning?
Remember a few months ago, when I suggested that single-family housing in Seattle would be on its way out soon? If Seattle’s population keeps growing, there is a hard housing reality that we’re going to have to face: the death of the single-family home. As of 2013, roughly 43 percent of Seattle’s housing stock is…
Kiss Single-Family Homes Goodbye if Seattle Keeps Growing
We usually talk about the whole Seattle metro area on these pages, but I’d like to take a little while to discuss an issue that is most relevant to Seattle proper: Density. There’s no denying that Seattle has been booming lately, thanks largely to serious growth in the local tech economy—unbridled growth at Amazon, the…
How-To: Turn a 1,475 sqft Lot Into a Half-Million-Dollar Home
This was spotted by a user over on Reddit’s /r/Seattle. The images below are of 3941 South Brandon Street on Google Street View. 2008: Empty 1,475 square foot lot. 2011: Foundation 2014: 1,687 sqft, 3-bed, 2.5-bath modern home The resulting home sold last June for just under half a million dollars. Here’s the listing description:…