Buying a house in Olympia. What red flags should we look for? (Bellingham: insurance)

[Blueflag63]

I am a Washington native but moved away 20 years ago. My husband got a job offer and we are moving to Olympia. 3 kids under 12. We will be looking at houses in a few weeks. What are some red flags we should look for? We have lived in Arizona for the past 20 years so are unfamiliar with issues PNW homes might have.

[Diana Holbrook]

This is a great area, and this is a good time to look. Places aren't going as fast as they were in our recent boom, and sellers are becoming more reasonable to contingencies and concessions.

Red flags? The main one is that there are, unfortunately some pockets of homeless camps around the downtown area, near the freeway greenbelts, and other greenbelts along creek and railroad right of ways. Look for those nearby any neighborhood you look in. I grew up in Tumwater, so I may be biased but I do think Tumwater is the cleanest of those red flags and has a great compact shopping area with Costco, Fred Meyer, WalMart, Home Depot and Walgreens all in one cluster.


Depending on exactly what you're looking for and where you want to be, Olympia, Lacey or Tumwater all have good areas, and there are great areas out of town too.

[mayfair]

Check the houses for mold or wet areas in the basement and garage. Sometimes these get painted over. This is a great time to look because you can see how the drainage is around the house. With kids, you want a yard that doesn't get so wet it's muddy in winter.

[rkcarguy]

Mold and signs of a settling foundation. Leaky roofs, rotten fascia and roof sheathing behind gutters, wall sheathing and baseplates/sills/studs/wall sheathing in near ground lumber/structures, around windows and exterior doors, and so on. It's wet here.
Echoing Diane, recent state legislation has turned the homeless/criminals/druggies into a protected class. They are stealing the stores blind and at least in my locale, attacking and robbing lots of people, even each other. WA has no castle doctrine or stand your ground laws to protect yourself in your home or other place of being, you're supposed to "retreat" first (or, IMO, submit, and hope insurance covers it and you aren't raped or killed in the process).
How certain cities deal with it varies, and thats reflected in how bad it is, or isn't. YMMV. Bellingham, for example, is pretty much enabling it and we have over 1,200 unsheltered homeless now. The same people, arrested and released, multiple times a day in the police reports. Unsheltered = PC way of saying on drugs, violent, mentally ill, that none of the churches and shelters will take.