Moving to Seattle area and need some housing advice (Tacoma: apartments, to rent)

[joshc08]

My girlfriend and I are looking into moving to the Seattle area. We are going to be making a trip to the area to look at neighborhoods and housing. I need some local advice as to what neiborhoods are nice and have a lower cost of housing so I can narrow down our search. I plan to rent for a year or so and then buy a house. We dont really want to live downtown but are looking to be within an hour or so from there for weekend trips and flights for work. We love boating, hiking, biking etc so it would be a plus to be close to those activities. Thanks for the help!

[Hemlock140]

Some idea of your budget would help a lot. The nicest areas are the most expensive and this area has a high cost of living for homes. With our traffic, an hour commute to Seattle can be just 20 miles. The areas north and south of the city are less expensive than east, but east is closer to the most boating, hiking, and biking opportunities. Still, you can do those activities pretty much anywhere in the region, even Seattle itself.

[joshc08]

Hey thanks for the reply. We have about a $60k income right now so we would probably want to rent for around $900- $1000 or so. We dont have kids so we would be looking at a smaller starter house in the low $200,000 or under. The girlfriend is just starting her career so we will have more income in the future to buy something nicer. We are just trying to get a feel for the cost of living before we make the move.

[Hemlock140]

The median studio apartment in the eastside cities is $1,200-1,400, 1 bedroom is $1,700. Apartments in your price range in Seattle would be mostly studios south of downtown, such as Columbia City/Othello. For homes to buy it will be hard to find anything other than a small condo for $200,000, with the median in King County at double that. You would need to consider a longer commute to places southeast from Seattle such as Auburn, Kent and Puyallup, or northeast to Mill Creek, Snohomish or Monroe, and those will be small, older homes which sounds like what you had planned on. I work near downtown Seattle and we have people living in those areas that come in by a combination of bus and train or commute in economy cars, but if you have to pay to park in Seattle it's expensive. If you fly for work the southeast or even south to Federal Way area might work for you.

[joshc08]

ok thats kind of what I was finding in my research too. A longer commute would be fine as i have a three hour drive to the airport now. We were looking at some places around the Snohomish area. Is everett a decent area? The housing costs seem a little lower there. Ill look more into some of the places you mentioned in the southeast. I have heard some negative things about the Tacoma area so i didnt look around there too much.

[Ira500]

Actually, parts of Tacoma are great. and parts of Everett are crummy, other parts are nice. My son lives in one of those newer apartments in Ballard. The 1 bedrooms there go for about 1400, the two bedrooms go for 1700. Capitol Hill and Queen Anne are more expensive, Lake City, Columbia City are less expensive. A newer two bedroom in Renton will rent for about 1400, Kent and Auburn are a little cheaper. Burien is close to the airport and a fun, cool place, if you're in the right part of Burien( closer to Puget Sound).

[mkarch]

You can find $200K houses in Burien. I'd take that over Everett if you need airport access. Everett to SeaTac is over 40 miles - which can be done in under an hour in the middle of the night usually but will be 1.5-2+ hours with traffic.

[joshc08]

Good info. I guess we have a lot of places to look into during our trip!