Silvar Palo Alto District

Ken DeLeon and his team were ranked #2 in the Nation recently. Great news for our Palo Alto District! Congratulations to DeLeon Realty! www.deleonrealty.com

New Palo Alto Zoning Update-

The ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT has been proposed by leading Architects and Urban planners since the 1990's to solve the housing shortage. Previous attempts to solve this problem with high density, high-rise, housing blocks has often been disastrous.
Under President Clinton the last Fedreal Housing high-rise "Project" was dynamited.

The premise of the ADU is that small housing units could be build as in-fill development which would solve many problems associated with concentrating lower income housing in one ultra-dense, high-rise housing block.

The City of Palo Alto had, until now, virtually banned the ADU by linking it to unrealistic parking requirements and lot size. Palo Alto's already odd zoning requirement that does not allow parking in a driveway was exacerbated in recent times by increasing the required parking space size to 400 s.f. In a typical scenario 800 sf of parking would be required for a single family house with a cottage. In the real world, the 800 s.f. that is assigned to parking by the Palo Alto zoning code, is enough space for a comfortable 2 bedroom house.

Governor Jerry Brown has interceded in this matter and overturned the City of Palo Alto's archaic zoning code by allowing ADU's without the parking requirements that have made them impractical or impossible to build on Palo Alto's small building lots.
It is now possible to build an ADU without parking, as an attached or detached structure. In the past the Palo alto's parking and driveway design requirements for a ADU could be far larger than the actual unit. ADU's are also exempt from the cost and time prohibitive Palo Alto Design review ( IR process) .

Excellent Market Update meeting tonight at the Palo Alto Art Center. Michael Dreyfus presented a review of the 2016 Palo Alto market and Palo Alto Realtors discussed what they expect in the 2017 market.

If you are a Palo Alto Realtor click the Sign Up button above to join the SILVAR Palo Alto District group for industry-only data and updates.

What a great meeting with our District Council! Bob Stelzer is fired up about new practices!