Housing supply front and center for REALTOR® advocacy in 2018

Annual report on legislative successes now available

From ADUs to education funding to housing supply, REALTORS® are working on issues that affect you, your business and your clients every day.

This year, Seattle King County REALTORS® supported successful efforts to build more homes in several cities in King County. In Black Diamond, two Master Planned Developments (MPDs) with 6,000 housing units between them are ready or on the way after years of delay. Another MPD in Covington will give the city 1,500 new housing units. In Issaquah, the end of a two-year moratorium on certain kinds of development means new opportunities to build more – and more variety – of housing for families that need it.

REALTORS® also saw victories in making better use of land already available for construction. In one of the year’s biggest wins, the state legislature voted to reverse the 2016 “Hirst decision” that effectively stopped the issuance of permits on mostly rural land with private wells, which in turn blocked land owners from developing their property as they saw fit. In more urban Kent, changes to zoning laws will increase density on long-underutilized land within the city.

Two housing issues that were huge in 2018 and will continue to be significant into next year are condos and accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Both of these housing types satisfy a need in our homeownership and rental markets, and both have been severely restricted because of laws on their construction and development.

Read more about how your dues dollars went to work advocating for your business in 2018 >

The government affairs program at Seattle King County REALTORS® operates under four basic principles to assist your business. Those principles are:

• Keep government from cleaning out your pockets
• Keep government from killing, delaying, or jeopardizing your transactions
• Encourage policies to create more transactions
• Prevent (and where possible, repeal) excessive regulations