- Feasibility
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- For Contractors
Your backyard is worth more than you think.
Washington just rewrote its housing laws. Most lots in Western Washington can now hold a second home — a DADU. Find out in 60 seconds whether yours can, what it would cost, and how people actually pay for it.
Built on the permit records & municipal codes of 35+ Western WA jurisdictions · No spam, no obligation
General notes
What you just saw is the product.
The next twelve sheets are the company behind it — and most of it is already running.
Project DADU is a feasibility engine, a legal data moat, a design catalog, and a qualified-lead marketplace for the fastest-moving housing category in Washington. Every number in this deck survived adversarial verification or is labeled with its source confidence.
Why now
The state legalized backyard homes. Nobody built the map.
Between 2023 and 2026, Washington passed the most aggressive ADU reform in the country — HB 1337 (2 ADUs on every urban lot, by right), HB 1110 (middle housing), HB 1345 (rural DADUs). Every city rewrote its code. Homeowners can't navigate it, and there is no official statewide tracker of what's legal where.
the arbitrage: regulation moved faster than information
The market
Tacoma is the hotspot. Seattle proves the ceiling.
| Tacoma / Pierce | Seattle | |
|---|---|---|
| ADU permit trend | ~15× growth — 581 since 2019, ~10/month now | 987/yr, applications declining |
| All-in DADU cost | $200–400k | $400–600k |
| 1-BR rent | $1,440 | $1,886 |
| Permit fees | ~$2–4k | $3.5k+ & slower |
| Best use of a good lot | Build the DADU | Teardown → multiplex (ADUs count against the unit cap) |
- Strategy: paid spend goes where the math works. Pierce & South King get the marketing dollars; Seattle converts organically.
- Renton is the wedge: free pre-engineered plans, all fees waived, permits in ~1 week — ~$40k savings per project.
- Kirkland, Shoreline, Bellevue each carry a timing story — Bellevue only legalized DADUs in July 2025: pent-up demand, zero incumbents.
- Serve all of Western WA — 35+ jurisdictions mapped across 3 research tiers; every address gets an honest answer.
The engine
Address in. Verdict out. Sixty seconds.
County parcel & zoning APIs → our jurisdiction rules records → gate checks → a five-category report. Every rule carries its legal citation, source confidence, and verification date — anything unverified renders as advisory, automatically. Prototype is built and live-tested on real parcels.
live-tested: an 8,124 sf lot screened green — its 2,217 sf neighbor correctly went yellow at ~435 sf of envelope
The moat
The DADU Law Registry: 26 jurisdictions audited, the rest of Western WA in flight.
- Every record cited to primary code — ordinance numbers, effective dates, fee schedules; audited by an independent adversarial pass.
- Currency is enforced, not promised: stale records automatically downgrade customer output to advisory. Session watch every legislative year.
- It caught what vendors get wrong — refuted a "$20–40k Seattle permit fee" myth (actual: $3,453) and two local rules sitting below the state legal floor.
- Nobody else has this. Not the state, not the counties, not a competitor. It compounds with every code change we track.
“The differentiating data layers — local adoption, overlays, septic, fees — have no official statewide tracker. That's the moat.”
— research synthesis, adversarially verified
Product · rung 1
Five tiles. The free report tells you THAT. The paid report tells you what, where, and how much.
- Two-step intake, 6 fields max — form conversion collapses past 7 fields; multi-step converts ~2×.
- Yellow and red are the business model: name the domain, say we found something, withhold the specifics, state the stakes.
- Every completed report feeds the funnel — and the $199 unlock is the strongest qualification signal money can buy.
Product · the ladder
Every rung pays. Every rung qualifies the next.
The rebate: every dollar a homeowner pays us becomes a credit against their contract if they build with a network GC. “Your report and consultation are free if you build with our network” — from the very first screen.
Product · the experience
Walk out your back door and into your new house — before a single permit is filed.
Plus referral revenue from stock-plan shops (5–20% affiliate) and partnership lanes with the region's pre-approved plan designers. Every $199 package licenses our own IP — visualization & feasibility use, clearly labeled “not for construction,” with the construction-drawing upsell behind it.
The economics
ADU leads are an unpriced category. We set the market.
No marketplace anywhere publishes ADU per-lead pricing — the category's players are success-fee concierges or vertical builders. A feasibility-verified, budget-calibrated, appointment-set DADU lead on a $200–400k contract has no established price ceiling. Shared-lead resale is legally clear (FCC one-to-one rule vacated, 2025) and our consent capture is built for the stricter world anyway.
The supply side
A contractor network built from the permit record itself.
- Qualification is unfakeable: a “Verified DADU Builder” has a finaled DADU permit in the public registry, a clean L&I license, current bond & insurance — re-verified automatically, daily.
- We already hold the target list: every GC who has pulled a DADU permit in the region, ranked by volume and recency. ~30–60 qualified firms in the core market.
- The anti-Angi pitch: no shared leads, no lead-blasting, no 12-month contracts. Consented contact, feasibility-verified projects, pay only on acceptance, automatic dud-lead credit.
- Founding cohort of 10–15 — free for life, first-pick window, blueprint-contribution credits. Launch gates on 6 signed. Capped at 15 so nobody starves.
| Ranked Tacoma DADU applicants (live pull) | Permits |
|---|---|
| MKM Legacy LLC | 109 |
| Sahlin | 53 |
| Synthesis9 | 32 |
| CJK Homes | 23 |
| Meacham | 17 |
recruitment begins with “you finaled the DADU on ‹street› — join the network built on that record”
The intelligence layer
Run the engine over every parcel in the region — and the marketing plan writes itself.
- Batch mode = a DADU-opportunity density map by zip code. Ad spend follows computed feasibility, not guesswork.
- Contractor recruitment targets the same map — sign builders where the feasible parcels are, ahead of demand.
- Lead pricing tiers by geography: a lead in a 60%-feasible zip with 1-week permits prices above a constrained Seattle lot.
- Self-updating: a city loosens its code → its zips light up → budget shifts. Automatically.
Where it stands today
Not a concept. A build in progress.
Rules schema + parcel screen running against real county GIS on real Tacoma & Renton parcels. Honest advisory downgrades encoded.
26 jurisdictions across 5 counties, cited to primary code, adversarially audited. Tier 3 (rest of Western WA) in flight.
Photoreal stills + walk-through video verified in production on the Blueprint Studio stack.
Five-category screen designed from kill-factor research; consult stack selected (~$2/consult to operate); pricing ladder locked.
Preemption memo, license terms, rebate mechanics, consent capture, designer agreements — 7 documents ready for attorney review.
Complete books from a finished Tacoma DADU build — converting the cost model from research to verified actuals.
The close
We will own the moment a homeowner first asks: “could I build something back there?”
Information → plans → coaching → referral → a fully packaged project. Every path monetizes. The data moat compounds. The beachhead is DADUs; the architecture ports to every regulated, high-ticket home decision that follows.
feasibility is not approval · all outputs preliminary · working name “BACKLOT” pending · © project dadu 2026