Christian Navar’s house is a detached, single-family home. But just barely: The space separating his two-story house from his next-door neighbor’s is narrower than his fist. His yard is only about 12 feet across. And he shares his driveway with six other homeowners.
“It’s a vertical, urban lifestyle, no question about that,” said Navar, an architect.
Welcome to the world of small-lot homes, the latest trend in single-family residential living to sweep Los Angeles. Sitting on lots as small as 600 square feet, these two- and three-story homes are mere inches from their neighbors. Often, 10 or more of these homes are on a plot that once held just a single residential or commercial structure.
Small-lot homes, which are popping up in trendy communities such as Silver Lake, Echo Park and on the Westside – and drawing the ire of some neighbors and housing advocates – allow developers to get a good return by building many homes on relatively little land. But they also present particular challenges for architects and builders, from how walls are erected to designing miniature yards.
Those challenges stem from the fact that, while small-lot homes might look like townhomes stacked up against each other, they are actually classified as detached homes – even if they’re detached by just a few inches. That distinction affords these homes some of the financial and physical benefits that come with more traditional houses, from lower loan and fee costs to private yards.
Since city of L.A. officials passed a small-lot home ordinance a decade ago to promote infill development, just over 2,000 lots for such projects have been approved, with hundreds of those coming just in the last couple of years.
The target market? People like Navar: Young urban professionals who can’t afford to buy full-fledged single-family homes near where they work and would rather own their own piece of land than be subject to the whims – and fees – of condo and townhome associations.
Navar lives with his wife, Krystal, in a small-lot home near the Culver City border, and just blocks away from his architecture firm, Modative, which specializes in designing them.
While he sees small-lot homes as an attractive option, he admits they are not exactly affordable. Ranging from 1,300 to 2,200 square feet, these homes are typically priced in the mid-$700,000s, with homes in the trendiest neighborhoods selling for up to $900,000.
“‘Affordable’ is the wrong term to use here,” Navar said. “I prefer to call them ‘attainable.’”
Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC, said even at such prices, small-lot homes in desirable neighborhoods fill an important gap in L.A.’s housing market.
“There really isn’t a lot of product that people in the professional class can buy in this city,” Green said. “And with land so valuable, this allows developers to put as many homes on as little land as possible.”
Game of inches
Navar is intricately familiar with many of the unique design features of small-lot homes. Take the wall space separating one home from another. There’s no minimum requirement in the city ordinance, so builders of small-lot homes have pushed this to the limit: For two-story homes, the gap is often just 4 inches; for three-story homes, it’s typically about 8 inches.
What determines the gap width? Of all things, earthquake codes. Every home needs a little bit of space in case it slides around during a quake.
“The key is that the home cannot slide across the property line; the amount of space you need depends on the height and overall mass of the home,” Navar said.
Of course, having outer walls in such close proximity presents its own challenges.
With houses so close together, walls need to be fireproofed and inspected. But with just inches separating two walls, an inspector can’t squeeze in. So, builders typically erect the outer wall of one house, then assemble the wall of the neighboring house on the ground, coat it with fireproof material and bring in the inspector before tilting the wall up into place.
Once the two walls are erected, the space between is usually covered on top to minimize exposure to the elements. That’s because cleaning the walls can be a big job and repairing them might mean taking one of the walls down.
Inside, small-lot homes take full advantage of their vertical nature, with more windows than townhomes or condos of equivalent size. Most have garages, though cars sometimes have to be parked in tandem. And almost all have their own washing machine units, eliminating the need for a communal laundry room.
As for outside private space, it comes in two forms: small yards or rooftop terraces. It’s not enough space for a game of touch football, but plenty for a small garden or to host a barbecue.
“This mimics a more traditional neighborhood – although closer together, of course – and gives residents a place for a small garden or simply a place for a small pet,” said Alan Scales, studio director and principal at KTGY Architecture and Planning in Irvine. KTGY has designed 20 small-lot home projects in Los Angeles, including Echo Park’s Gaspar project, which opened late last year and sold out its 10-unit first phase last week.
Financial savings
In the early days of L.A.’s small-lot ordinance, one of the big selling points was the ability to take advantage of the lower down payments and interest rates that come with mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. But many small-lot homes now coming on the market are too expensive for FHA-backed loans, which top out at $625,000.
Still, there are other savings, both for homeowners and project developers.
Julianne Gibson, a loan consultant in the Anaheim office of imortgage of Scottsdale, Ariz., one of the main loan providers for the Gaspar project, said owners of small-lot homes typically pay much less in monthly maintenance fees than owners of condos or townhomes.
The maintenance associations that take care of common areas in small-lot developments typically charge about $100 a month compared with the $500 or more charged by homeowners associations in many condo complexes. Since each small-lot homeowner is responsible for maintaining their own structures and yards, the maintenance association in a small-lot home development has much less to take care of – perhaps just driveways and some landscaping.
The single-family detached-home status also pays off in insurance savings for developers and builders. In a condo project, when the roof over one unit has a leak or the wall in one unit has a structural problem, the whole building is considered at risk, making the repairs more costly and exposing the builder to class-action construction-defect lawsuits. That in turn, has driven up premiums. In small-lot homes, if there’s a problem with one home, it stays within that residence, which means less liability for the developer.
But while small-lot homes are growing more popular with developers, they’ve sparked a growing backlash from both neighbors concerned about density and advocates for rent-stabilized housing.
Small-lot projects can only be built on land zoned for commercial use or multifamily housing – not, ironically, on land zoned for single-family residences. Many of the older buildings that have been demolished to make way for these projects contained rent-controlled apartments, meaning working-class tenants have been displaced to make way for people who can afford $850,000 homes.
“The developers and the buyers of these small-lot home projects each come out winners,” Green said. “But if there are any losers here, it’s these displaced tenants.”
