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Are small cottages the next big thing in housing?
Article about cottages in Seattle
The Seattle Post Intelligencer
By Aubrey Cohen
Five new cottages in West Seattle are unlike just about any other new houses on the market in the city.
Each has a compact main floor that fits a living and dining area, a U-shaped kitchen, a cozy bedroom and a powder room, with the main bedroom and a full bath in a loft above. The five cottages and an existing old house on the site have small, private yards that border on a shared central courtyard. A row of six parking stalls along the side of the site replaces private garages.
And they're all on the market for around $300,000, with the larger, older house listed for just under $400,000.
The Brandon Street cottages owe their existence to the slowing market and glut of available townhouses – which usually would be built on the site, given its zoning, said developer Bryan Coniglio of Sojourn Investments.
"You have to have something unique," he said. "Otherwise, nobody's going to look at it."
While this project is unique in the city of Seattle, the area is a national leader in such cottage developments. In fact, projects by area developer The Cottage Company, which has built in Redmond, Kirkland, Bainbridge Island and Shoreline, and on Whidbey Island, were featured in a Wall Street Journal story in July about cottages.
The goal of cottages in general is to provide the feel of a single-family, detached house while taking up less land and reversing the decades-long trend of bigger and bigger homes, Cottage Company owner Linda Pruitt said.
"Sixty percent of the households are just one or two people, and yet in our single-family housing, new construction efforts we continue to build McMansions," Pruitt said.
Smaller options tend to be condominiums or townhouses, she said. "But the truth is most folks prefer to live in a single-family environment."
