The tool
Does this house convert?
Put in a house you are looking at. The listing record answers what it can, you answer what it cannot, and you get the property read before you write an offer.
This works as a form with JavaScript on. Without it, the two lists below are the questions worth answering about any house you are considering. Take them to the showing.
- 1Address
- 2The record
- 3The rest
- 4Your read
Anywhere in King or Snohomish. A neighbourhood works too if you are still deciding, and you can skip this and answer by hand.
What the listing record says. Confirm or correct it. Once the NWMLS feed is licensed this arrives filled in and you skip straight past it.
What no listing database records. Not NWMLS, not Zillow, not Redfin. None of the following is a field anywhere, and all of it decides the answer. Best guess is fine.
One step left
Where should the read go?
It runs to a few hundred words on this specific house: which item carries the cost, what is cheap by comparison, what cannot be changed, and the list I would take to the showing.
Where the cost is
Cheap by comparison
Cannot be changed
Take this to the showing
None of it is recorded anywhere, and every one of them moves the number.
That is the headline. The rest of the read, which item carries the cost and what to check at the showing, needs somewhere to go.
Want me to find you ones that do not fight you?
There is no AFH property type in NWMLS, so no portal can filter for a single one of the things you just answered. I run this search by hand every week. Thirty minutes on the phone and I will know what to watch for.
This answers the property question, not the licensing one. Whether an adult family home is permitted at any given address is decided by the city and by DSHS, not here. Training, background checks, the application and the per-bed fee are DSHS territory and they are well covered elsewhere. A property read, not a construction estimate and not a licensing opinion. It describes what tends to drive conversion cost, which is my job. What is actually required differs by jurisdiction and by the licence issued, and it changes: confirm specifics with the city and with Washington DSHS before planning around any of it.
Why I take this seriously
I grew up in one of these
My parents converted the garage and the back yard of the house I grew up in. It operates as a licensed adult family home north of Seattle, and it is the reason I know the property side of this from the inside rather than from reading about it.
Two things from that stuck with me. Breaking ground to holding a licence took two years, and they had their first resident within a month of opening. Demand was never the hard part. Carrying a property that produced nothing for two years was.
The other thing: the house should be flat. Residents very often arrive after a fall, and what the family is really shopping for is confidence it will not happen again. That is not a box on a licensing form. It is the thing being bought.
- 2 yearsBreaking ground to licence
- 1 monthTo their first resident
- 6Residents a standard licence allows
What this does not do
It does not price the work. I am a broker, not a contractor, and a number from me without a scope from someone who builds these would be a guess dressed up as advice.
It does not tell you whether a licence would be granted. That is DSHS, and requirements differ by jurisdiction and change over time.
What it does is the property question, which is the half almost nobody writes about and the half that costs the most to get wrong. If you would rather I looked at a house properly, that is the other page, and the Monday list is where the new ones turn up.
Worth reading alongside it: what drives a conversion budget, what it costs to start, and the permit that catches people out.
