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| Vacant lots awaiting construction crews like the future site of the ION 149th are a common sight in Shoreline - photo by Oliver Moffat |
By Oliver Moffat
It’s tough times for the real estate investor. High interest rates, inflation and worker shortages are making it hard to secure financing. And with a recent surge of big apartments in the region, vacancy rates are rising.
At the City Council Meeting on January 29, 2024 the council held a public hearing on proposed ordinance 1003 which, if enacted by the city, would help developers by extending permit expiration dates. No one from the public spoke at the hearing and the council is set to approve the measure at the February 12 meeting without debate.
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| A graph from the UW WASHINGTON STATE APARTMENT MARKET REPORT shows increasing vacancy rates for rental apartments |
According to the City, the last two years set a record for new apartments entering the market and the vacancy rate has hit a 15-year high. Apartment developers spend years and millions of dollars buying land, planning buildings and securing permits before they start digging.
Once issued, permits normally expire after six months. Because of high interest rates, developers are contacting the city pleading for more time because although their projects are approved they haven’t secured the financing to get started.
Once expired developers must reapply for new permits and conform to any new zoning rules the city has recently put into place. The city granted extensions in 2020 and again in 2021 because of the global pandemic and stay-at-home orders. In August 2023, the city extended the permit expiration dates by six months and now is considering doing it again.
Once expired developers must reapply for new permits and conform to any new zoning rules the city has recently put into place. The city granted extensions in 2020 and again in 2021 because of the global pandemic and stay-at-home orders. In August 2023, the city extended the permit expiration dates by six months and now is considering doing it again.
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| A graph from the King County Housing Needs Dashboard shows Shoreline needs 13,330 new homes by 2044; two-thirds of which must be affordable to people making less than 80% of the area’s median income. |
The city needs more homes; a lot more homes. According to data from the King County Housing Needs Dashboard, Shoreline needs to build 13,330 new homes before 2044 to accommodate our rising population and more than two-thirds of those homes need to be affordable to people making less than 80% of the area’s median income.
Shoreline has seen a surge in large apartment developments thanks to zoning rules to allow greater density and tax breaks for investors who make some of their units affordable to people earning 70% or 80% of the area median income.
But, according to the city, there’s a problem: “despite the volume of residential units, Shoreline has not seen a correlating volume of commercial space in these areas that could provide retail services to the residents of those developments and would also contribute to the creation of a vibrant, walkable community.
Currently commercial development is not as lucrative as residential, due to the competition for developable land. Without development regulations mandating commercial space, the City is losing a valuable opportunity to provide the services to residents of a growing city.”
And so, in December, the city passed the ground floor retail rule that requires big apartments to also have commercial space. Because the ground-floor retail rule is new, developers who get an extension under the proposed ordinance won’t be required to go back to the drawing board to add commercial space.
Tough times indeed.
Something's really wrong with this picture:
ReplyDelete"And with a recent surge of big apartments in the region, vacancy rates are rising."
And yet:
"The city needs more homes; a lot more homes. "
Or maybe developers need a lot more fancy cars and vacation homes.
Tough times for them. Penalize them for not having affordable apartments and retail space. Do not reward the with a bail out. They are greedy
ReplyDeleteThese developers who are needing a extension should have to provide retail space as a condition od extension. Also maybe a couple years of a certain number of low cost rentals as a condition. Greedy developers should not be rewarded for poor planning. They are not building affordable housing.
ReplyDelete1. How do we find the inventory of buildings in Shoreline that have to provide "affordable" units? How do we know they have rented them and are not offering only "market rate" apartments to qualified renters?
ReplyDelete2. "Lack of retail space" in the developments...excuse me, I thought that was a regulation that the City considered and adopted? Or was it considered and rejected? Certainly the density of new development in North City should have required retail space since they are all in a commercial core.
3. If the permit is extended and then the code changes/is updated, does the developer have to abide by current code or by what was code at the time the permit was granted? I'm imagining a future where City of Shoreline no longer allows clear-cutting all the tall trees on every soon-to be-developed property. (On a related note, could someone explain why developers get to cut everything down to bare dirt but homeowners need to jump through hoops and pay $ before they can take out a tree that's dead/dying/hazardous?)
4. Does anyone from the City Council ever read this blog?
The planners always trust their growth models, which never predict anything that can't be modeled. For example: pandemic, shiremmremote
ReplyDeleteTone deaf article. We have zero sympathy for the developers with their overpriced “affordable” housing destroying our neighborhoods or the city council enabling this process.
ReplyDelete"Shoreline needs to build 13,000 new homes..."
ReplyDeleteStrange that the advocates of unrestrained growth minimize the effect it has on our dieted roads and our schools.
You know, some of us moved here years ago because it wasn't Seattle. Shoreline had tall trees and offered less dense living, at the cost of being further from downtown. The current cabal of developers and our City Council are doing everything within their power to stuff this city full of people, lowering the livability of our community.