A controversial rule that reduces the amount of land required to build a home in Austin goes into effect Friday. In some neighborhoods, landowners wanting to build a home will now need 1,800 square feet of land, about two-thirds less than the old requirement.

Members of the City Council voted in May on this change, called HOME Phase 2Theoretically, a landowner with a 740 square meter plot of land, which is about the average lot size in the city, could divide it into four lots and build a house on each.

By reducing the long-standing minimum lot size by more than half, elected officials hope it will be easier to build more homes in central neighborhoods. More homes in popular neighborhoods, they argue, could lower the overall cost of housing and provide current homeowners with an opportunity to sell part of their backyard.

But developers building in those very neighborhoods – often called “infill developers” because they “fill in” spots where houses already stand – say more changes are needed before they can take advantage of the opportunity to subdivide a piece of land.

The biggest problem, developers say, is the current parceling process. To divide a 550-square-meter lot into several smaller ones, for example, an owner must apply for parceling rights. This process can take years and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“Currently, the parceling process is too expensive and too lengthy to make sense for smaller projects,” said Brita Wallace, board member of the Austin Infill Coalition. Two other developers KUT spoke with agreed with Wallace. City staff are working to simplify that process, but it’s not clear when those changes will be ready for a council vote.

Those in favor of lowering the city’s minimum lot size called the May vote historic. For nearly eight decades, Austin required landowners to have at least 5,750 square feet of land before they could build a home. That rule, called the minimum lot size, effectively ensured that as developers built more homes, the city increasingly resembled a suburb rather than a city center.

Michael Minasi/KUT News. Opponents of zoning changes allowing more homes in central neighborhoods posted signs in their yards reading “STOP HOMENEXT Save Austin Neighborhoods.” The signs refer to CodeNEXT, a process the City Council began in 2018 to revise Austin’s zoning regulations. CodeNEXT was ultimately blocked by a lawsuit filed by homeowners.

This historic vote was also controversial, with dozens of people testifying before council members for more than 12 hours, prompting council members to extend their vote to a second day.

Those who spoke in favor of lowering Austin’s minimum lot size argued that the city needs more housing to further reduce housing costs, and that letting people build closer together would help the city achieve its goal of getting more people to use public transportation. Those who spoke against said they feared that allowing property owners to build more would speed up the city’s redevelopment, and that current residents might be displaced if one home was demolished to make room for more.

In response to these concerns, council members agreed to delay the new lot minimum rules for six months. Parts of the city where residents are more likely to be displaced by redevelopment. According to the work of researchers and employees of the city of Austin, this also applies to large parts of the city east of Interstate 35.

To curb the rise in housing costs in recent years, council members pushed for land use changes last year.

In November City council lifted the requirement that the developers provide parking spaces. One month later approved the first phase of HOMEallowing developers to build up to three homes on plots of land where previously only one or two could be built.

Wallace said the changes in December were much easier to manage because they allowed developers to build more homes without first subdividing a large plot of land.

According to the city, staff have already issued or are in the process of issuing building permits for 160 properties across the city as part of HOME’s first phase, including 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 could get the permits and start construction within a few weeks.

This story was created as part of the Austin Monitor‘s reporting partnership with KUT.

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