Washington State rewrote the rules on residential land. Most homeowners don't know yet

Site Lines by Rami Al-Kabra
What's changing on the Eastside, explained by someone who helps shape it.

My name is Rami Al-Kabra. I'm a real estate broker on the Eastside and an elected Bothell City Council member. I spend a lot of time reading planning documents, sitting in policy meetings, and watching how decisions made in Olympia and in city council chambers eventually show up in what gets built, what things cost, and what your property can do. This post is about a set of changes that have been unfolding for five years and that most homeowners in Bothell, Kenmore, Kirkland, Woodinville, Bellevue, and Redmond still haven't heard about.

If you own property on the Eastside, this affects what your lot is worth. If you're trying to buy, it affects what's coming to the market. Either way, it's worth knowing.

Here's the story.

When I started digging into the comprehensive plans for the cities I serve, a pattern emerged. Every city, in its own language, was pointing toward the same pressure: not enough housing, not enough variety, and not enough room in the existing rules to fix it. The comp plans were the cities' response to that pressure at the local level. But underneath them, the state had already been rewriting the rules.

It started in 2021. A state law changed the Growth Management Act's language on housing from "encourage" affordable housing to "plan for and accommodate" it. That one word swap turned an aspiration into an obligation. Cities now have to show their math across every income level, not just in aggregate.

In 2023, the legislature passed two bills that most Eastside homeowners still don't know about. House Bill 1110 ended single-family-only zoning statewide in cities above 25,000 people. In Bothell, fourplexes are now permitted on every residential lot. Six units are allowed near major transit stops. House Bill 1337 went after the restrictions cities had used to block accessory dwelling units. Every residential lot in the urban growth area now legally supports two ADUs in addition to the primary home. Owner-occupancy requirements, heavy impact fees, design restrictions: most of those tools are gone.

The same session produced a bill creating a simpler legal structure to actually sell this new housing as individual parcels rather than wading through full condominium law.

In 2025, Governor Ferguson signed House Bill 1491 into law. Near light rail stations, cities must allow buildings roughly six stories tall. Near qualifying bus rapid transit stops, four stories. The Puget Sound region has until 2029 to comply. Land near transit is already being priced with that trajectory in mind.

This spring, the governor signed another round of bills. One extended warranty insurance to four-story condominiums, reopening a product category that developers had largely abandoned for a decade. Another legalized a stair configuration common in Vancouver, B.C. that lets builders fit more units into the same building. A third extended middle housing requirements into unincorporated areas within urban growth boundaries, closing a gap that had let county-governed parcels avoid the density rules applied to nearby cities.

So what does all of this mean for you?

If you own a larger lot anywhere on the Eastside, your property's development potential changed in 2022 and has continued changing since. The rules governing what can be built on it are not what they were when you bought it. That matters whether you're planning to stay, sell, or simply want to know what your neighbor can now build next door.

If you're buying, the market under $700,000 has been thin and frustrating. The legal infrastructure to supply it is now in place. Construction timelines mean it won't arrive tomorrow, and the current economic environment — rising construction costs, elevated rates, and tariff pressure on building materials — is adding friction to an already difficult pipeline. I covered that in detail here. But the rules that blocked new supply for a decade have been removed one by one.

If you own near a Swift BRT corridor or a light rail station, you own property the state has designated for significantly more density in the near future. Whether that's a concern or an opportunity depends on your situation. But knowing about it is better than not.

These laws don't build housing. Builders and buyers and financing and market conditions do that. What the laws do is change what's possible. And on the Eastside right now, what's possible looks very different than it did five years ago.

I'll keep covering this as the policies move from legislation to actual buildings.

Sources:

Rami Al-Kabra
Real Estate Broker, eXp Realty
(206) 701-9272
[email protected]
https://ramialkabra.exprealty.com/