Home Coming

RENTON - In the second quarter of 2019, reported the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies (http://realestate.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/09/2019Q2WAHMR.pdf) at the University of Washington, the median sales price in King County - the state's most populous - was $701,200. Even with the highest median family income in the state, that's very hard nut to crack for a sizable number of King County families, especially when less than a quarter of homes for sale were priced at or below $500,000.

"It's unbelievable," Renton, Washington Mayor Dennis Law recently told The Renton Reporter, (www.rentonreporter.com/news/affordable-and-sustainable-new-homes-prove-its-possible) to try "to figure out how people who work in King County can actually live in King County. Home ownership is becoming a thing of the past, and it's scary for young people trying to get started and get some housing."

Maybe not much longer thanks to a project under construction in the city's Sunset neighborhood. It's called Willowcrest, a project for which Homestead Community Land Trust (www.homesteadclt.org/) broke ground in late 2019.

When completed next year Willowcrest will have 12 town homes, a mix of three- and four-bedroom units. They'll be priced to sell at less than $315,000 and be affordable to families with incomes between 60 and 80 percent of the County's median income.

"How the heck," you may ask, "can Homestead sell brand-new homes at a price less than half the County's median price?" For starters, a series of almost $1 million in in grants from the City of Renton, King County and the non-profit Community Frameworks' HUD-funded SHOP program are subsidizing construction costs and the sales price.

So too is the fact that the parcel on which it's being built was donated by the Renton Housing Authority, the first time an authority in the County has done that. Supporting "affordable homes for sale to families," its executive director Mark Gropper explained, (www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191120005149/en/Homestead-Community-Land-Trust-Begins-Construction-Zero-Energy) "is an important means by which the agency can address the current housing crisis."

Homeowners' maintenance costs also will be lower, become the town homes will achieve "net-zero energy usage" through highly efficient systems, construction, and the use of solar panels for onsite energy generation as well as efficiencies such as insulated hot water pipes, thermal pane windows, three-zone ductless heating and cooling, with significant portion of features are made from recycled materials.

But maybe the biggest cost-cutter results from Homestead Community Land Trust's commitment to "shared equity" homeownership model. In traditional mortgages buyers pay for both the house as well as the land upon which it sits. At Willowcrest the homebuyers purchase the house but lease the underlying parcel from Homestead at an affordable monthly cost.

The prices of homes as well are subsidized to reach a price point affordable to modest-income buyers. Better still, current Willowcrest homeowners want to sell, the sales price needs to be affordable to the next income-qualified borrower. Homestead estimates that these "permanently affordable" will open the door to homeownership for up to 80 first-time buyers over the next 50 years.

"For too long, people have framed affordability and sustainability as competing priorities. We simply don't have time for that kind of thinking anymore," Homestead Community Land Trust executive director Kathleen Hosfeld said. Come its grand opening next December, Willowcrest can demonstrate the two goals aren't at odds, but in sync.

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