If you’re planning to buy land or build in Kitsap County, permit timelines are probably already on your mind. They came up again on November 2, 2026, when the Kitsap County Commissioners’ Office heard from the Kitsap Building Association (KBA) and the county’s Department of Community Development (DCD) about how long permit reviews are taking….
The question sounds simple — land or house? — but what it’s really asking is: do you want a project, or a place to live? Those are genuinely different goals, and they lead to different answers depending on your timeline, your budget cushion, and your honest tolerance for a multi-year building process. Land looks cheap…
One of the most consistent patterns I see with land buyers in Kitsap, Poulsbo, Silverdale, and out toward Belfair is the timeline gap — the difference between what people expect and what the process actually delivers. They buy land thinking they’ll be moving into a finished home in a year. Two years later, they’re still…
The previous posts in this series covered property types — SFR vs. multifamily, land vs. improvements, STR vs. long-term rental, value-add vs. turnkey. This one is different. These aren’t asset categories. They’re angles — ways to tilt the playing field in your favor if you’re willing to do work that most buyers won’t. None of…
Land is one of those investments that sounds simple and turns out not to be. No tenants, no toilets, no 2 a.m. maintenance calls. Just a parcel sitting there, quietly appreciating — or quietly costing you taxes and carrying costs while the entitlement process grinds along. Improved property has the opposite feel. It’s messier from…
One of the most common complaints I hear from people doing projects in Kitsap is permit timing. It’s slow. It’s unpredictable. You submit, you wait, you get a correction letter, you resubmit, you wait again. The state heard that complaint — and passed SB 5290 to do something about it. Here’s what changed, what it…
Mason County doesn’t have a single dramatic headline change the way Pierce County’s June 2025 overhaul does. What it has is something that can be just as dangerous: quiet, cumulative tweaks that move quietly through the code and alter what’s allowed on rural parcels without generating much notice. Mason County’s code is now codified through…
Kitsap County adopted its updated Comprehensive Plan and zoning code changes on December 2, 2024. Those changes went into effect April 1, 2025. If you own property in unincorporated Kitsap — or you’re buying land here — April 1, 2025 is the line in the sand. Plans and assumptions made before that date may not…
Most Kitsap land and waterfront regrets sound the same: “We thought we could build more than that,” “We didn’t realize the well was going to be a problem,” or “We had no idea the shoreline rules were that strict.” The loss isn’t just money — it’s years. Years of permitting fights, engineering reports, and legal…
Here’s what I know: most real estate “disasters” in Kitsap County aren’t bad luck. They’re the same handful of mistakes, showing up over and over again — around land use, wells and septics, rushing a contract, and miscalibrating expectations on price. I’ve watched them blow up deals, and if I’m being honest, I’ve made a…