Ben Uyeda

No, we bought a piece of land that had been empty for about 15 or 20 years.

We got the blank land for just right around $100,000.

It was zoned for two units, so you could build a duplex there.

Um, and what we immediately did is since I'm very interested in sustainable design and green design is I want to build, you know, a state of the art, uh, solar powered super insulated building, um, that would really reduce its impact on the environment.

Now, I know that consumers don't always want to pay extra for that on either the renting end or on the purchasing end.

So my strategy was, rather than try to increase my margins there, is could I leverage that with the city to get some zoning variances?

So since I bought the land for $100,000 and it was zoned for two units, when I made my proposal to the city, I said, well, I'm going to build a really energy-efficient building that uses less resources than a typical building.

So can I get a zoning variance to build a three-unit building?

So I worked with the community to get them behind a proposal.

I worked on the design to make something that the local neighbors and stuff thought was aesthetically pleasing.

I spent a lot of time sort of explaining to people how the building was going to be different than a typical one.

And after working with the city for about six to eight months, they granted the variance.

And that's huge because it's a great thing really for everybody because we get a...

Typically, buildings in that area have six-inch thick walls, which means there's only about five and a half inches of insulation.

My building has 12-inch thick walls, so it means it's about double the insulation of a normal building.

Now, that obviously costs quite a bit more, but it's great because the city was able to see that and give me the variance.

It encouraged me to invest more into the building that will last longer, use less resources, and

And so it was sort of a win for everybody because that one zoning variance allowing to build an extra unit, that dramatically increased the value of the whole project.

So if it was two units with the sort of a maximum square footage that we were allowed to build, we'd probably bring in about, you know, about twenty two to twenty five hundred per unit.

So we're looking at right over right under like sort of between four and five thousand for a two unit building.