NO WAY in hell I'd ever buy property in Seattle proper due to the tenant friendly city council idiotic dead beat favor laws.

Obviously the best advice so far is to seek council from a legal professional who specializes in this area, to wit, I am not that.

Is there a real need in the community, a needs analysis needs to be done.Will you or can you simply serve an existing non-profit, like Council of the Blind, if so, simply lease to them or individually with a lease guarantee, keep it simple.If I were doing a conversion I would ask P&Z about a R-1 SFD being converted to multi-family, a 5 plex and leave it  at that, P&Z isn't discriminator about who leases, but if there medical  issues or security concerns about a certain population then you may have other ordinances, other restrictions can then be applied.    

Examples would be the National Multi-Housing Council or the National Association of Home Builders (usually affiliated with local HBA’s per above).

I'd be happy with a JuCo dropout, 2 out of 5 council members in Portland barely have a GED (I don't know if they can even spell it).I think the sadder thing is the voting population here and how easily duped they are.

Since it is not how most people rent/purchase; both parties should pass it by council first before signing.

Others on the forum disagree with me, and I'm not as keen on Minneapolis with the direction the city council is going (making it a bit more difficult in my opinion to be a landlord in Minneapolis). 

The Seattle market will be affected by the city council's decisions, but it will not affect TX.

I have single family rentals and a short term investment (beach) rental, and multi family is one of the things that I am looking at actively, but our zoning here doesn't allow much of that in Charlotte, although zoning loosened up wiht a City Council vote here, September a year and a half ago, to allow for more higher density housing- finally! 

I am a Canadian from the west coast, British Columbia.