how to research land use?

[hopey]

There is a parcel two lots down from us. The house on the lot was demo’ed in September. I’ve been able to do enough research to figure out that it’s been approved as a short plat (two lots out of one), but in this housing market I am VERY surprised that there has been no further activity on the lot.

We are in an “environmentally sensitive” area near Fauntleroy Park. I am kinda wondering if there are environmental or other issues holding up the land owner’s plans, but I can’t find anything online. Any suggestions on how to continue researching this?

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[Jack]

Contact the Seattle Department of Planning and Development. Their website is http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/ You might be able to find something there.

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[Ken]

Are you familiar with the basic tools of IMAP and parcel view on the county web site?

http://www.metrokc.gov/gis/mapportal/iMAP_main.htm

A starting point only since the info is sometimes months out of date and typos are years getting fixed. But a good tool none the less.

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[WSB]

Here’s our preferred methods.

The King County Parcel Viewer will tell you the address of a site if you don’t know it, the owner, the zoning, when it last sold, etc. Handy if you are looking something up in relation to your own lot.

http://www.metrokc.gov/GIS/mapportal/PViewer_main.htm

Once you have an address — or a parcel number — you can look things up through the DPD website.

go to

http://seattle.gov/dpd

click “search by address”

When the address comes up on a results page, click it, and it will show you if any permits have been applied for, etc. You may know all this if that’s where you got the plat info.

But this is my favorite DPD research page for individual parcels:

http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/dpdgisv2/parceldatasearch.aspx

Besides some of the same info you get from King County Parcel Viewer, this will also tell you some of the environmental characteristics etc. of a site. That may give you a hint as to whether there is some challenging factor on the land you’re researching.

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[Author]

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