Seattle City Councilmember Mark Solomon's new proposal to increase penalties on predatory real estate speculators — crafted in response to an executive order from Mayor Bruce Harrell — is a great idea. On July 23, the Housing & Human Services Committee, on which Solomon serves as vice chair, chose to skip its scheduled meeting and instead hold a "community discussion" on the agenda items, including this bill. What the committee should do is pass the damn thing already.
Rarely do I find myself agreeing with Harrell and Solomon, but as someone who gets a lot of junk mail from developers looking to lowball me out of my home, and also someone who has seen the devastating effects of those developers lowballing my neighbors in South Park out of their homes, I'm all the way on board.
The bill takes aim at offers to buy homes that are not on the market, typically in "up and coming" (read: rapidly gentrifying) neighborhoods. South Park is one of those, and I've seen them all: printed notes in fake handwriting font detailing how much the developer cares about you; elaborate charts about prices that contain exactly zero relevant information; "Upzone edition!" bulletins touting policy changes that the sender expects the recipient not to fully understand. Being a journalist with an eye on City Hall, it's pretty easy to see through the bullshit, but I'm not the real target audience.
Typically, these unsolicited offers are aimed at elderly or financially distressed homeowners, whom the developer hopes will be confused or pressed enough to take far less than the fair market value of their home. I've gotten letters explicitly offering a higher price for a fast, no-appraisal sale. The goal is, of course, to rush things before the seller realizes that their land is worth a lot more than what's in the letter. This ordinance, which builds upon this year's House Bill (HB) 1081, would slow that process way, way down. Perhaps even put a permanent stop to it.
HB 1081 created a right to appraisal in situations where an unsolicited offer is made, as well as the right to receive notice about the buyer's obligations to offer an appraisal. It also allowed property owners to cancel a purchase contract within four days of an appraisal or within 10 days of contract execution if they opt to waive an appraisal.
Solomon's ordinance would go even further to protect elders and neighbors at risk of being duped, creating fines of up to $10,000 for buyers who shirk the rules around appraisals, and allowing homeowners even more time to get out of bad deals. It strengthens HB 1081's disclosure requirements to ensure that both parties sign the disclosure, gives homeowners 10 days instead of three to hire an appraiser, and ups the post-appraisal cancellation period from four days to 10. Most importantly, it creates a private right of action for homeowners against any buyer who fails to comply with the ordinance.
Now, I'm not saying that every townhome project in my neighborhood was ill-gotten, but when I was looking to buy, in 2015, it was already nigh impossible to get an offer in before the developers. I toured a lot of homes clearly still occupied by a family, including one family that wasn't doing so well financially. In all of those instances, the houses went to cash offers from developers before I could even send my own offer. The resulting townhomes — hastily built from particle board and pure greed — typically sold for more than double the price of the teardown house, and that's per unit. I have no way of knowing what happened to the occupants, but I feel pretty comfortable guessing they didn't end up in one of those townhomes, or anywhere in the neighborhood, for that matter.
Ultimately, I lucked out and found a place. It wasn't yet zoned for development and was just busted enough to scare off the mid-30s, straight couples with tech money. Having that house has absolutely, unequivocally kept me from being displaced. In fact, the reason I even thought of buying was I went looking to rent a room, did some math, and realized I would be rent-burdened even if I started commuting from Kent. Having a nice, fixed-rate mortgage, on the other hand, made me rent unburdened and allowed me to do financially unwise things, like work in indie journalism and not pull doubles at my restaurant jobs every day. The fact that you are reading this column has everything to do with me finding a permanently affordable place.
Now, I am by no means a defender of single-family zoning. I am happy as hell that the legislature mandated sixplexes within walking distance of transit lines. I'm ready for density. But we can't deny that when developers offer owners a price on a home that's half the cost of the new housing unit that will replace it, the type of density we are creating is directly responsible for a lot of displacement.
Sure, people can sell their home for a tidy profit, but where will they live after that? It'd be one thing if we were replacing these aging homes with affordable housing, but we're not. The wholesale replacement of cheap, crappy homes with expensive, crappy townhomes has completely changed South Park. Where once we had a nice mix of well-tended gardens with junk cars in front yards, we've now got tiny patios with Audis parked out front. The place is crawling with $400 parkas and people towing kids and dogs around in those fancy folding carts. I mean, those people need a place to live too, of course, but where are the people who sold supposed to go?
So yes, Solomon's bill is a great bare minimum measure to stop homeowners from getting displaced and left with less than they deserve. But we need to do a lot more to combat displacement. We can't look at a single-family home that sells for $500,000 being replaced with six townhomes selling for $850,000 each and say that's a win for affordable housing.
To really fight displacement, we need to tear down junk houses like mine, build social housing in their place, and offer the sellers somewhere they can afford to come back to. Is that an apartment or unit they own free and clear? Is that just a good deal on rent? Is that relocation assistance to bring buying something else in the city within reach?
Probably all and more, but we can't keep waiting for density to save us. Unless we act with intention, it won't.
Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.
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