House Hacking North to Seattle

[Dorothy Yin]

Hi folks,

I am a REI newbie in the Seattle area. Starting to learn a lot of great knowledge from the BP community. My boyfriend and I are looking to buy our first primary residence in the Greater Seattle area, and I would like hear your suggestions!

We are mostly looking for 

• 1. Areas that are North to Seattle: some of our family live further north, and we want to stay relatively close to them.
• 2. an hour-ish driving commute to Downtown Seattle and Bellevue / Redmond
• 3. house hacking with privacy (basically do not share living room, kitchen, bathroom etc) and preferably with separate entrances
• 4. Quiet personal space - this is kind of similar to #3, but just to highlight and put in some context, for us, DADU is WAY BETTER than a basement MIL suite.

With these, should we stick to house hacking with ADUs? Any other strategies? 

We looked at a few SFH with ADUs in the Everett area, but after doing some limited BP research, I realized that the law for ADU in Everett is not very friendly. If my understanding is correct, when we no longer live in the property, we can't rent out the primary building and the ADU separately. Do people rent them out together then? Will that cause any sublease issue?

Other than Everett, any other areas in the north we can look into?

Thank you in advance!

[Dorothy Yin]

I did more research today and start thinking about buying an ok-ish house with a large lot and adding a DADU in Seattle. Owner do not need to occupy the home, and the potential to condonize the DADU is too appealing... Open to more discussions and appreciate any inputs!