Beginning next month, people can apply for permits to build cottage housing in unincorporated Pierce County residential areas.
Cottage housing is a term used to describe developments where smaller homes are clustered around shared open space.
“I think what is really special about cottage housing is how well it aligns with home ownership,” said Lauren Flemister, the deputy director of planning and public works for Pierce County.
Flemister said this kind of compact development — where space, resources and parking are shared — makes these homes less expensive. She estimates that these kinds of houses would cost somewhere around $450,000.
As part of the county’s comprehensive plan update and in an effort to increase residential density, the county removed design and zoning standards that limited middle and infill housing development. The regulations are now more supportive of alternative housing types like townhomes and triplexes, while still allowing single-family homes. The regulations focus on allowed density instead of a building type.
But for cottage housing, the county wanted those regulations to be spelled out separately.
“ Folks have familiarity with things like townhomes and four-packs and six-packs and things like that. That feels more familiar to people. But cottage housing is a little bit more of a departure,” Flemister said.
What can be built now?
The code says these homes can be up to 1,250 square feet, with anywhere between four and 16 units in a development.
A low-density urban neighborhood in the county is regulated as four to six dwelling units per acre, roughly a quarter-acre lot for a single-family home. That doubles for cottage housing, allowing up to 12 units per acre. In more dense areas, Flemister said cottage housing could also look like groupings of townhomes.
Who might these homes attract?
“ We're also trying to create a housing continuum that has opportunities for a diversity of people in different circumstances,” Flemister said.
First-time homebuyers, people wanting to downsize and people with disabilities who might be looking for a single-story home are the kinds of buyers that might be interested in cottage housing, Flemister said.
“ One of the benefits of cottage housing is it's able to share and build efficiencies around infrastructure improvements and those amenities which are very expensive,” she said. “ We really feel these units can meaningfully be more affordable.”
Real estate broker James Savereux said that cottage housing is less common in western Washington, but he thinks that this type of housing could become more popular because of its price point.
“ I see a lot of people looking to buy a home in their mid-20s, late 20s, and they just wanna get into the housing market and not pay rent,” Savereux said.
Oftentimes, buyers working with Savereux don’t want a condominium or townhome because they don’t want to share a wall.
“ Cottage housing kind of fixes this issue because you have, essentially a single-family home with townhome, condo pricing,” he said.
Plus, while a lot of more affordable housing options in Pierce County might be further away from city centers and transit options, Flemister said cottage housing can be developed closer to transit. And, by virtue of sharing open space, these developments can help foster community.
“ There's a lot of humanity, I think, in a cottage housing development,” Flemister said.
Where else do we see cottage housing?
There are nine cities and towns that already have some form of cottage housing in Pierce County. Other cities in western Washington have experimented and used this housing type for years.
In Kirkland, cottage houses are one of the most popular middle housing types. In 2025, 111 of the 168 middle housing units that received permits were cottage houses, according to Adam Weinstein, director of planning and building for the city of Kirkland.
Kirkland has been experimenting with cottage housing since the early 2000s, when a pilot project launched to build a few developments in certain neighborhoods.
“ We realized that the market wasn't really producing the type of entry-level housing that is needed in the community,” Weinstein said.
In 2020, the city loosened its regulations on where cottage housing can go, lessened the number of units that had to be built, and did away with parking requirements and other barriers to encourage more of this kind of development.
“I think what these are envisioned as are family-sized units that constitute entry-level housing in Kirkland, which doesn't necessarily mean that every family can afford this housing,” Weinstein said. “But it's a lot more accessible to folks who are making a bit above the median income in Kirkland.”
These homes can be up to 1,700 square feet and often have a garage and their own yards.
“ You might walk into a cottage like that and not even know that it's a cottage,” Weinstein said. “ These cottages are not fundamentally different from what we were historically building in our cities. We just sort of got away from that due to market pressures.”
Not for everyone, or everywhere
In the early 2000s, Shoreline adopted regulations to allow cottage housing. Within just a few years, permits for nine cottage communities were submitted. The community didn’t like the change — like for aesthetic reasons, or because homes were too close together — and the ordinance was repealed, said Elise Keim, the planning manager for the city of Shoreline.
But decades later, Shoreline wanted to try cottages again. Shoreline was already in the process of trying cottage housing again when the state passed its middle housing bill, which went into effect in 2023.
The city had planned some specific design requirements, like porches and front-facing entrances, in response to lessons learned from when cottages were allowed in the early 2000s. But the middle housing bill from the state did away with that.
Since the city adopted new regulations to comply with the state, Keim said there haven’t been any proposals for cottage housing developments. She said that could be because there’s a variety of middle housing options.
“ Cottages were a really innovative housing form when there were very restrictive zoning rules,” Keim said. “ Now that there are just so many other options, I think it varies by jurisdiction.”
Read the audio transcript here.
