All Forum Posts by: Kyrstin Szewczyk

A neighbor next to my rental property has a dog. One of their chickens got into our property’s yard. Our tenant has a dog and is rightfully afraid of the chickens getting in and their dog attacking and or the neighbors dog getting in. 
The neighbor is offering to build the fence if we pay materials. Is this a fair deal? We haven’t bought a ton of lumber or had to pay a contractor recently to know where things are at other than that everything is expensive. 

Obviously, the most fair would be to share expenses and labor, except we do not have time until at least mid July to work on it. 

The fence is technically on our property probably, but he is the one that needs to contain his animals (the fence is adequate for our long term tenant’s dog to stay contained). Of course we also want to maintain good relations with neighbors but don’t want to get caught with a huge bill. 

My uncle is part of the RHA and has found it helpful https://www.rhawa.org/
I keep meaning to check it out but haven't since I can get so much second hand information off of him and others I know in real estate. But that's me being lazy! It's worth checking out at least :) 

Also, there's a lot of meet up groups involving real estate in the greater Seattle area, where you could network to learn more information as well. Then of course look up the actual laws as shown above versus just going off others' interpretation.

I use Cozy. 

On Cozy if the tenant links their bank account it's free to use making a deposit that way (which is the same as writing a check, right? No credit card but no fee). 

There is the week-ish delay of getting your funds but you should have reserves for repairs etc. anyway so that shouldn't be a problem. 

I like that it emails me and I can easily go back through at the rental history instead of checking different bank accounts every month for the different payments, instead I can just log into one account if I want or just check my email. I also really like that it has autopay for them so none of my tenants are ever late! No having to send email follow up. 

I just heard of Avail (when a current tenant began searching for another place and I got a background check from them) so am just starting to research it. I like the fact they have maintenance and repair tracking since that's something I can improve my communication on personally. Though this just gave me the idea I can create a google form for maintenance (type of issue, title, description) then have them email photos as needed. I also like that they send out automated emails for reference checks. I've run into issues where it's a such a hassle to call apartment buildings that don't answer and then refuse to talk to you unless you FAX over a signed lease, and doesn't always tell you much anyway. A giant waste of time but also not worth $25/month for me when I only have 4 places I manage with very infrequent vacancies. I would pay per use but not per month. 

Edit: I just saw Cozy has maintenance requests on there! I had no idea *face palm*. Is it nerdy that I'm excited about trying it out?! 

That makes sense! That was my concern as well when we were looking at it. I feel like you have to go fully into the off-the-grid experience, so the renter is choosing that lifestyle, or mostly not at all. I could be totally wrong, that's just my thoughts.

We have the same issue of not being able to do a tiny home on wheels like we want to because then it's an RV and you can't live in it in Seattle (which causes me to roll my eyes because there are always 1-5 RVers living illegally down our street). 

Did you look into composting toilets at all, @Peter Grilley? Just curious. 

That’s actually what we’re planning for :D we’ll change our plans if need be but hoping for those new rules to go into affect. Since it takes so much time to get these things going overall I don’t want to wait until April to start planning :) 

That’s cool you’re trying to do the same thing! What neighborhood? We are in the Northgate area 

Thanks so much @Nicholas Amante, that gives me a great place to start. And no worries, we'll hire an electrician. We want this fully legal (unlike most ADUs in Seattle) for resell value if nothing else. 

Thank you both for those helpful comments. I will look into microhouse, thanks, and check with my husband again on what he found out about sewer lines (he talked to someone in the city but I can't remember the details). Hopefully it's uphill! It all looks fairly flat but I know it can be subtle. 

Good point on sharing utilities or not. I knew we'd have to look into it but didn't even think about doubled up base service charges. 

@Nicholas Amante do you happen to know with separating utilities if we end up sharing electric say, would my breaker need to be big enough to handle both houses (even with of course a second box over at the ADU) and/or if you can saparate electricity but then have shared sewer (if it was cost effective to run electricity from the power line but needed to tie sewer into my own line)?

@Gina Jeannot thanks for the advice on prefab. I'd tried searching for those vs builds before but there's so much info on the internet it was a bit overwhelming to try to figure out cost differences and quality, so thank you very much for those links and summary. 

My husband and I have a large backyard and have thought about building a legal ADU to rent out (or even live in while renting our main house, though that's less likely).

We have comfortable in buying single family homes, hiring for remodel, and managing rental properties. I have also read a book on building tiny homes (which obviously is more complex than cottages due to weight / dimension restrictions but something we are considering due to potentially re-platting later if we can buy another property next to us)

We've never built anything for scratch or ran utilities out and currently have to contend with only having a shared driveway (it's technically half on our property but goes into our neighbors backyard so they've been the ones to use it for years; there is no official easement but from what we looked up from their years of use it's kind of possession being 9/10ths of the law)

Do you have experience building a backyard cottage / tiny home in Seattle? If so, where did you start? Who do you hire? 

Any tips on running utilities to your backyard?

Any idea of cost estimate in Seattle? For the cottage / tiny home and/or the utilities?

How would you fund this project? (we have an idea for a partnership and have been saving cash so may not even need one so I think we have a solution but always am open to ideas)

Any idea on a timeline once the contractor begins work? 

Any tips on working with a neighbor with a shared driveway and construction? 

Thanks so much everyone, especially Greg for the do it yourself with links, wow! I really appreciate that :)