Welcome
The cottage housing industry is booming. While real estate around Washington is falling while cottage or clustered housing is remaining successful(strong). Through research in the cottage housing industry it shows that a 1000 square foot house can sell for $400,000 fairly quickly. While a 1000 square foot house non cottage housing sells for relatively the same price but is on the market for a much longer time. With the Cooke Riverside Properties company the investment made in it is a sound one, and one that will prove to be profitable.
There are four complexes that I have researched in obtaining data on cottage housing, Redmond, Kirkland, Shoreline and West Seattle. The Shoreline and West Seattle complexes are fairly small houses ranging from 800 to 1000 square feet. Based on the pricing of these houses and surrounding “regular” houses, and by regular I simply mean houses that aren’t cottage houses, it was decided on how much to make the 1500 square foot homes on the Tukwila property. Also another variable that had to be considered was the basement which would add up to another 400 to 600 more square feet. This additional square feet was also considered into making a reasonable value on the houses. For the houses that were bigger I used the Kirkland and Redmond complex housing prices. Considering that in Redmond the housing value fo r a 1450 square foot home was $465,000 and in Kirkland it was $550,000 for a 1500 square foot home and the surrounding values for houses the data was collected to come up with the value for the 1500 square foot homes with the additional basement.
Another way of researching was to compile data based out of neighboring cities that have similar data. These cities that were researched were Covington, Burien, and Lynnwood with Tukwila’s data they were all compared to King County to see overall how the cities were doing. Except for Covington the median income for the cities was fairly similar. For housing values in 2006 the data shows that median value was at a low in Tukwila at 214,000 while in Burien it was at a high 255,000 considering these two values as a high and low they are fairly close. Also to figure out what kind of living styles people had in each city the size of the household and average age was used. With an average household of 2.4 in Tukwila, 3.1 in Covington, 2.5 in Lynnwood, and 2.4 in Burien that data suggests that Lynnwood and Burien have similar households to Tukwila. The average age in Tukwila is 33.4, in Covington it is 32.1, in Lynnwood 34.9, and in Burien 38.4, showing that Tukwila, Covington and Lynnwood have a similar average age.
A set of data that is also important in considering when figuring out the value of the housing project in Tukwila is to observe neighboring cities with similar square feet and cost of the house. Once the seven cities (Seattle, Tukwila, West Seattle, Kirkland, Burien, Redmond, and Shoreline) were observed an average square foot and cost was calculated. On an average house that was 2056 square feet the cost of the house was $553,100 and on a house with the square feet at about 1425 the cost was $396,392. Considering with the added floor space that won’t be calculated into the actual square feet the housing project that Cooke Riverside is doing with a 1000 to 1500 square feet space with a possible extra 4-600 square feet of unheated space meaning that it is a basement and/or patio, making these houses viable to be in competition with the 1400 to 2000 square foot housing.
The target market that is being reached out to is single family households, empty nesters, new families and elderly couples. This target market will be the most successful in selling because a small family could enjoy the communal feeling that is being invoked in this area. By targeting these groups similar to how other cottage housing projects have done the potential to sell quickly is greatly increased. In other cottage housing projects such as those in Kirkland, shoreline, and Redmond to name a few they have sold out with the first 2 years of the project opening, with the resale value of the houses much higher than what they were originally sold at.
Currently unemployment is at 4.5% which is averag e. Meaning that the labor force is currently maintaining which will allow for people to keep jobs and with increasing inflation and interest rates, income will continue to rise. As income rises so will the cost of housing and with the demand of housing increasing in Tukwila the urgency of cottage housing in this area is high. Right now in Tukwila there is less than 50% home ownership in Tukwila which means that people will tend to start owning homes in the near future. There is a trend with cities that there are less than 50% of renters in a city.
This is a good start!