About Us
Owner - Benj Wadsworth
Benj Wadsworth began his building career as a gopher for a design/build firm on Cape Cod during summers in high school and college. His career has taken several detours over the years as he worked as an outdoor educator, natural resource planner and non-profit executive director, but through it all he has been involved in real estate and building.
Benj bought his first rental house in Seattle in 1998 and has been “house hacking” in Seattle ever since. He has added ADUs to four properties and built DADU’s on three more, with a fourth in progress. In 2016, he quit his “real job” and started investing, designing, and building full time. During that time, he also took on several building projects for others and pursued additional education in design and sustainable building at the Yestermorrow Design Build School. Right Size Design Build grew out of Benj’s background in investing in, designing, and building his own D/ADUs, and he is now focusing his energy on helping others achieve the benefit of D/ADU ownership.
Benj was very involved in advocating for and shaping the changes to the Seattle D/ADU rules in 2019, and through that process developed an intimate knowledge of the new rules. He is uniquely positioned to evaluate your property and your personal situation in determining how to move forward with an ADU or DADU.
When not messing around with real estate, designing or building, Benj can be found exploring the outdoors with skis, a bike or a kayak and photographing what he finds on his adventures (benjwadsworth.com).
The Right Size
Right Size Design Build’s name came from our distaste for the monstrous houses we see popping up all over Seattle. You can adopt every green building strategy in the book, but if you are building a 4000 sf house that is much larger than you need, they don’t add up to much. With that ethos in mind, we feel that D/ADUs are a great, low impact way to increase density and add housing in the fast growing Puget Sound region. We can help you determine how big you are allowed to build and also help you decide what size D/ADU makes the most sense for your lot and personal situation.
High Performance / Green
Benj’s love of the outdoors and desire to protect the natural environment of the PNW has led him to further his education in high performance (green) building. He is an active member of the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild and has taken numerous classes in high performance building techniques. At the same time, we realize that high performance building can add cost, and we understand that any investment in a rental property needs to work financially. With that in mind, we know which strategies to incorporate, and which ones may not make sense.