Are there enough places to build in Snohomish County?

It can be wonky, but it also can have a huge impact on home prices.

Snohomish County is putting together its comprehensive plan update, a once-every-10-years exercise looking at future growth in and around cities.

This year, it looks like the county won’t be adding any land to the urban growth areas where development can occur. County planners found that there’s enough supply of land to support development.

But builders say the number of lots for future homes is tight and it’s getting tighter.

“We’re saying our members who are out there every day say there’s not as much supply as you think and that’s bringing up the cost of housing,” said Shannon Affholter, executive director for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

There’s a reason for the difference between what planners are projecting and builders are seeing, Affholter said. A report used by planners to project growth came out in 2012.

It relied on a snapshot of a county still struggling through the recession. Since then, the county has experienced a serious upswing in development.

“We have faith in the county’s demographers and the work they do,” said Mike Pattison, the association’s Snohomish County manager for governmental affairs. “We think largely the disconnect is the timeframe of the report because it covered the recession.”

Snohomish County planning director Clay White says the report — what is called the “buildable lands report” — shows there’s enough land for development for years into the future even if development is on the rise.

“The economy goes up and down at different intervals,” White said. “Sometimes there’s more growth and sometimes there’s less.”

The Master Builders aren’t planning to ask the County Council to add land into the urban growth areas.

Instead, they’ll ask for some tweaks in the update, which is scheduled to be finished by June.

And then push for larger additions in the next comprehensive plan, which will be handled in 2023. (A state law change is requiring future comprehensive plans to be updated every eight years.)

“In our view, the day after this comprehensive plan passes, we want to urge the county to look ahead to increase the land supply with potential (urban growth area) expansions,” Pattison said.

The comprehensive plan is a guide to growth in the county that looks at density of neighborhoods, expected population trends and employment growth. It also looks at traffic, public facilities and even parks.

In general, areas within cities and the urban growth boundary have four or more homes per acre. Areas outside of the urban growth area are limited to one home for every 5 acres.

In the late 1990s, the state required counties to generate the buildable lands report, said Ryan Countryman, principal planner for the county. So far, the county has finished three of these reports, which were published in 2002, 2007 and 2012.

The first report, the county actually hired a research firm to survey hundreds of property owners about their intentions on their property.

Those projections have proven very accurate, Countryman said. For the 2012 report, the county didn’t have the money to hire an outside research firm.

But planners were aided in their analysis by the fact that the county had already issued permits for many projects pre-recession.

“Many of the permits that we’re still processing, they got applied for in 2004 to 2006,” Countryman said.

But the Master Builders Association says the economic climate in the past two years has been far different from the economic climate between 2007 to 2012.

“The numbers in our mind are so shaky,” Pattison said. “The most recent buildable lands report largely covered the recession years when development came to a standstill.”

As buildable land supply dwindles, the cost of homes go up, because builders have to pay more for lots. And that causes other problems.

“Transportation is an issue,” Affholter said. “People are having to live further away from their work, because that’s where they can afford a house.”

He suggests that more buildable land be added around job centers like Boeing. Pattison said the association won’t challenge the county’s numbers. They do hope the county council will make some tweaks to the plan.

And there’s another option, too. In the years between comprehensive plan updates, individuals and cities can petition to have land added into urban growth areas on a case-by-case basis in what is called the “docket process.”

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Pattison said. “It’s a costly, risky process.”