They also advised me that our rezoning application has a greater chance of getting approved by the city council if we propose to build townhouses instead of apartments.

Basically, it comes down to a City Council meeting, which is a public hearing where the public are able to voice their opinions for or against the application.

I'm trying to understand the intent of the exception to make sure this can't be interpreted some other way that could prevent me from building a single family home on this lot.I've spoken to a RE attorney, who also sought council from a title insurance company, and both feel that if anyone tried to file a suit against me for building a home on this 10,000 sqft lot, they would likely not have a case, but the RE attorney feels there's still some small risk that the covenant had some intention, that's not clear from the wording, that a resident of the subdivision could try to enforce.The RE attorney's best guess at what the intention of the covenant is, is it would prevent anyone that combined lots to then break them back down to smaller than 16,000 sqft.

@Todd Mason I’d be cautious as when the winds turn against STRs in a community and they get restricted by city council, the HOAs tend to follow along soon after in my experience.

So the city council there obviously doesn't care for STR's and its not going to get better.The smart money is pivoting to LTR's or selling and investing elsewhere. 

It may be appreciating even faster now.Still, Oakland has the nastiest new controls on small landlords of any city (in my opinion) and the Oakland city council is more willing to support ongoing property and wealth transfer proposals from their rent board (RAP). 

I backed out of the STR market when I saw how volatile and uncontrollable the situation could get in the hands of the city council that favored the big time players.  

It will be coming up to vote at City Council any time now.

I emailed Tacoma's city council prior to this in an attempt to try and shed some logic from both a landlord and veteran agent's perspective that owns/works in the area. 

I live in the area and the local town councils have cracked down aggressively on permitting, making it more expensive and harder to get.