An accessory dwelling unit — a backyard cottage, a garage conversion, or an apartment inside your home — is one of the most common things people ask me about right now. Some want room for aging parents, some want rental income, and investors want to know whether the numbers work. Almost everyone starts with the…
Most investment content starts with the upside — the cap rate, the cash-on-cash return, the appreciation story. That’s useful, but it’s not where deals go wrong. Deals go wrong when something that wasn’t priced into the underwriting turns out to be real: the ADU plan that wasn’t actually permittable, the insurance premium that repriced significantly…
You’re scrolling through listings and you find it: a 2.5-acre parcel outside Silverdale or a waterfront lot on the peninsula. The price looks reasonable. The photos show open land, room to build, maybe a view. Then you dig in and realize the actual buildable footprint is maybe half — or less — of what you…
Here’s what I know: a big yard, a long driveway, and a beautiful remote setting are wonderful features, and each one also comes with upkeep and distance worth thinking through before you buy. The question worth asking when you’re planning ahead isn’t just “where do I want to live now?” It’s “where will I be…
Kitsap’s rural areas are genuinely beautiful — trees, space, privacy, stars at night. All real. So is the 20-minute drive to get milk, the private well you’re responsible for, the septic system that needs periodic attention, and the driveway that becomes an adventure after a windstorm drops a cedar across it. Rural Kitsap offers space…
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…
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…
The mortgage payment gets all the attention — and it deserves some, because it’s the biggest monthly number. But after watching enough buyers go through closing and into ownership, the pattern I see most often isn’t people surprised by their mortgage. It’s people surprised by everything that sits around it. The closing costs they didn’t…
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…