Builders can now construct homes on less land, as Austin’s new minimum lot size goes into effect

A controversial rule that lowers the amount of land needed to build one house in Austin goes into effect Friday. Landowners wanting to build a home in some city neighborhoods will now need 1,800 square feet of land, about two-thirds less than the old requirement.

City Council members voted on this change, coined HOME Phase 2, in May. Theoretically, a landowner with an 8,000-square-foot lot, which is close to the median lot size in the city, could split that up into four pieces of land, erecting one home on each.

By cutting the city’s long-standing minimum lot size by more than half, elected officials have said they hope it will be easier to build more homes in central neighborhoods. More homes in popular neighborhoods, they reason, could lower overall housing costs and provide current homeowners with the option to sell off a portion of their backyard.

But developers who build in these same neighborhoods, often called “infill developers” because they “fill in” places where homes already exist, say other changes are needed before they’ll take advantage of being able to split up a piece of land.

The biggest issue, builders say, is the current subdivision process. In order to break up, say, a 6,000-square-foot lot into several smaller ones, an owner needs to apply for the right to subdivide. That process can take years and cost upward of tens of thousands of dollars.

“Right now the subdivision process is too costly and too lengthy to make sense for smaller-scale projects,” Brita Wallace, a board member of the Austin Infill Coalition, said. Two other builders KUT spoke with echoed Wallace’s thoughts. City staffers are working on simplifying this process, but it’s not clear when those changes will be ready for a vote by Council.

Those in favor of lowering the city’s minimum lot size heralded the vote in May as historic. For nearly eight decades, Austin required landowners to have at least 5,750 square feet of land before building one home. This rule, called minimum lot size, effectively ensured that as developers built more homes, the city grew to resemble a suburb more than an urban center.

This historic vote was also controversial. Dozens of people testified in front of Council members for more than 12 hours, prompting Council members to extend their vote into a second day.

Those who spoke in favor of lowering Austin’s minimum lot size argued that the city needs more homes to further bring down housing costs and that letting people build closer together would help the city achieve its goal of getting more people to use public transit. Those who spoke against said they feared allowing owners to build more would supercharge the city’s redevelopment, potentially displacing current residents if one home were demolished to make way for more.

In response to that concern, Council members agreed to delay the new minimum lot size rules for six months in parts of town where residents are more vulnerable to being displaced by redevelopment. This includes large swaths of the city east of Interstate 35, according to work done by UT Austin researchers and city staff.

Council members have been barreling ahead with land use changes in the past year in an attempt to curtail a rise in housing costs over the past couple of years.

In November, City Council eliminated the requirement that builders provide parking. A month later, they approved the first phase of HOME, allowing developers to build up to three homes on pieces of land where historically they could only build one or two.

Wallace said the changes in December have been much easier to navigate because they outright let developers build more homes without dividing up a lot first.

According to numbers from the city, staff has approved or is in the process of approving permits to build homes on 160 properties throughout the city under the first phase of HOME. That includes a project Wallace is working on: building a 1,300-square-foot home behind a smaller one in the Chestnut neighborhood.

Instead of waiting at least a year, she said she can get permits and begin building within weeks.

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.

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