SPOKANE, Wash. — The Washington Department of Commerce says Washington will need 1 million new homes in the next 20 years to keep up with population growth.
Lawmakers are betting that multi-family housing is the key to achieving that goal. That includes duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes.
This year, lawmakers in Olympia approved multiple bills to incentivize developers to build these types of units as well as requiring cities to rezone neighborhoods that were traditionally zones for single family homes.
This allows for more of a higher density of people to live in the same building, and opens up another avenue for home-ownerships.
The question is: once they are built, will families even want to live in them?
The idea is that a family could pay for a duplex and rent out the other side. That rent pays the mortgage, the owner can save up money and eventually have enough to purchase a single-family home, all while acquiring equity.
Tom Hormel with the Spokane Realtor Association says this could be a cost-effective path to homeownership.
"I've sold homes to people who were going to live in one side of the duplex and rent the other side and they've done very well with it," Hormel said. "Some of them are paying the entire mortgage if they haven't refinanced."
Because of the limited inventory across every facet of the housing market, the cost to purchase a duplex is comparable to a single-family house.
On Zillow - we searched for a two-bed, two-bath duplex at a maximum price of $350,000. Only nine options were available in Spokane.
Read more on "The Inland NW Housing Crisis" Special Reporting Project:
