We are proud to announce that we recently reached the exciting milestone of selling our 100th backyard home. As a small, local company that isn’t VC funded, the support of our customers and partners means everything to us and we couldn’t be more grateful to them. MyKabin was founded almost three years ago at a time when barely 100 DADUs were built per year in Seattle and there were almost no companies focusing exclusively on them. Seattle had carefully revised its legislation for backyard homes, but would its residents be interested in DADUs? The answer was overwhelmingly yes – planners and builders have historically underestimated the demand for this type of housing, and we’re proud to provide a product that fits the needs of our community. We’re not selling designs – we are selling a solution for missing-middle housing.
Seattle and the greater Puget Sound, like many other cities around the country, have limited housing choice through restrictive zoning, but we’re happy to see that starting to shift and catch up with market demand. Recent change in legislation has provided some positive steps forward in revising antiquated zoning laws, allowing denser development in the residential neighborhoods of Seattle. There is now more opportunity than ever for homeowners to add DADUs to their properties. Backyard homes are changing the shape of neighborhoods in Seattle for the better, and they will continue to do so. The need is there: people want their family members to age in place; extended generations of families are living together; homeowners are turning their DADUs into rental properties, or renting out their primary homes and moving into the DADUs themselves. We hope that Seattle will build on the positive change it has made and continue to enable ADUs and missing-middle housing more broadly.
Our goal when we started the company was to test the market: we wanted to know if people would be interested in a more value-oriented approach to DADUs – that is, a simplified and more affordable construction process versus high-design and architectural style. We weren’t looking to revolutionize the construction industry by coming up with the greatest new technology or building the coolest new thing. Our goal was to solve bigger problems across the industry as a whole: cost overruns, complex processes, miscommunication, hidden fees, and general stress and chaos for the client. From day one, our mission has always been to make our clients’ lives easier. Our innovation is in how we work with our customers and our expertise in what we do.
In the three years since we started, our mission hasn’t changed. In fact, we think it’s more important than ever to keep our process simple and the price affordable so our clients can get maximum value. Some things have changed since our inception: we’ve added (and expanded) floorplans and have made reconfigurations to our models based on the feedback and needs of our customers. We’ve grown exponentially and have big plans for the future: as more and more cities follow in the footsteps of Seattle, we hope to expand so that everyone can benefit from a builder that has the most regional experience and the best DADU product on the market.
Interested in seeing if your property is eligible for a backyard home? Get in touch!
