Relocating from Phoenix, looking for suggestions

[homesinseattle]

Hi Laura! Yeah, get out! I feel like I’m trapped in microwave oven when I go see my wife’s father in Tucson. May I suggest you strongly consider North Everett, about 30 miles north of Seattle. Providence Medical Center has a substantial presence there, the historic character neighborhoods and waterfront parks/promenade are very underrated, imo. Lake Stevens is a suburban vibe place closeby.

[Hemlock140]

Our next door neighbors moved here from Phoenix several years ago, and immediately had a couple of 80' high fir trees cut down. They were just not used to tall trees and were scared to death of having them fall onto the house, though that is rare.

The Vancouver/Portland commute will be a mess in the near future if you take the I5 bridge, as it is in the design phase of replacement, and the new one will be tolled. You would be better off living and working closer to the highway 205 bridge, but of course that one will get heavier traffic with the construction and the toll.

Olympia to Tacoma can be a nightmare, the traffic through Joint Base Lewis-McChord/Fort Lewis/Dupont seems to always be backed up whenever we go through there. Federal Way, Puyallup, or even Gig Harbor with a bridge Toll would be a much easier drive to Tacoma.

[Diana Holbrook]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Olympia to Tacoma can be a nightmare, the traffic through Joint Base Lewis-McChord/Fort Lewis/Dupont seems to always be backed up whenever we go through there. Federal Way, Puyallup, or even Gig Harbor with a bridge Toll would be a much easier drive to Tacoma.

The biggest issue with I 5 south of Tacoma is that there’s only one path - if there is an accident, there’s not an alternate route through Nisqually. It’s a bottleneck.

As for the other directions, I think they are worse… Puyallup has grown exponentially and there are bad back ups to get through the I-5/512 interchange both ways.

The current Gig Harbor toll is $4.50-6.50 per day (charged on the Tacoma bound trip) I love Gig Harbor, but I don’t know any working person who would want to build that into a daily commute. Occasional maybe.

[CrazyDonkey]

Areas with a good amount of hospital/lab jobs:

Seattle/Bellevue, Tacoma, Vancouver/Portland, Olympia, Everett, Bellingham, Bremerton/Silverdale.

[jabogitlu]

Honestly I think you might need to find the job first. Commuting in this region is not easy because there are not many freeways and there are a ton of geographic constraints that hinder the free flow of traffic. So, having a job at UW-Med or Harborview (county hospital) will necessitate an entirely different housing search than working in Tacoma or Olympia. The region as a whole is definitely not commutable in the sense of living anywhere in the Puget Sound and driving to any other random point for work.

If you do find yourself working in the UW-Med/Harborview medical corridor (lots of jobs here: Seattle Children's, Fred Hutch, Virginia Mason, Swedish, Kaiser, as well as the aforementioned Harborview and UW-Med) then could you still find a nice suburban-ish residence on that kind of salary. As a single earner you might be just a tad priced out of the central leafy neighborhoods. But there are still houses in the $800s and $900s in neighborhoods like Haller Lake, North City, Shoreline, and Lake City that would be a fairly quick bus or drive into the city.

[AKStafford]

Come to Alaska. Live in Eagle River. There's 3 hospitals in Anchorage.

[Superhornet]

OP I'm going to dogpile on the "commute" thing.

Don't underestimate that. "Highway miles" is an imaginary number when it comes to PNW traffic. Bridges do NOTHING to make a commute easier. Rain (which it does sometimes up there) doesn't make a commute easier.

Find your job first, then work from THAT location.

People move there and say "Oh I'm from "X" so I already know about traffic." Not true at all.

[texasdiver]

What is different with traffic in the Pacific Northwest compared to Phoenix or other big sunbelt cities like Dallas or Los Angeles is that there are many more geographic obstacles that create bottlenecks that you can't avoid. Phoenix and Dallas are big flat sprawling cities in which the highway system is more or less a giant grid like a large version of the city block grid in that if there is a slowdown on one freeway you can often just skip over to the next freeway to the right or left. Kind of like going around the block.

What we have in the Pacific Northwest is water and bridges and there are often no viable alternatives. There are only 2 bridges across the Columbia between Portland and Vancouver. That is it. You have to go 40-50 miles in ether direction to find the next bridge east or west which no one is ever going to do unless some natural disaster completely closes the Portland bridges.

Likewise between Olympia and Tacoma you have Puget Sound to the west and the very enormous combined Air Force and Army base Lewis-McCord to the east so your only alternative is I-5. In theory you could try to drive all the way around the other side of Joint Base Lewis McCord but that is going to add 50 miles or so, so no one does it.

Seattle is much the same. It is long narrow city with water on each side and there are only two bridges across Lake Washington to the east side suburbs. It is a very LONG way to drive around the lake north or south. And there is the ship Canal and Lake Union that divides Seattle from North and South with only a limited number of bridges across as well, which all create bottlenecks.

So even if the population is smaller than Phoenix, the traffic can be much worse, especially if there is a big accident or something. Because you don't have alternatives.

[Diana Holbrook]

Plus you have decades of policy to not add any more general traffic lanes.

[NORTY FLATZ]

Originally Posted by Laura77

Hey there. Hoping you fine people can point me in some viable directions.

Long story short, I want to get the hell out of Phoenix. I can't deal with the 120+ days that last for several months on end. I've been here for 12 years and I can't stand the thought of another summer here. Looking to relocate. I haven't decided where yet so here I am looking for information to help make my decision on where to start my job search. The cities I'm considering are: Seattle (and surrounding area), Tacoma, Vancouver, Portland OR, and San Diego, CA. Somewhere where I won't be confined to my house 6 months out of the year due to extreme heat. I don't mind the rain or cold and it certainly won't keep me indoors.

I'm a clinical laboratory manager/scientist, so I can work anywhere there's a hospital. My annual income is roughly around 200-225k (likely to increase significantly in PNW where pay is higher for my profession) per year. I know how expensive PNW can be, and I'm hoping this would still be doable. Would be looking for a SFH with a yard (doesn't need to be a huge yard or anything, I just have 3 dogs that would appreciate it), so apartment and condo is probably off the table. I'm trying to stay realistic on what areas I could afford comfortably, if any at all. No kids, so school districts aren't a concern. Naturally I'm concerned about the cost of living and maybe taxes? Phoenix has a pretty low cost of living so I want to be sure that I can prepare for that.

What would you suggest? Where is the most affordable? Not really big on night life, bars, etc, but would be cool to be close enough to drive into the city, whatever city that may be, if something fun was going on. Not really interested in politics at all, but am very socially liberal if that matters.

I haven't started my job search yet as I want to narrow down where I'm looking first so as not to waste my time or anyone else's.

What areas do you love? What do you love about it? Is it affordable for my salary range?

Any insights or advice is greatly appreciated. I need to get out of this heat sooner rather than later. Thank you!

If you pull down $200+, you should be able to qualify for a place in Oceanside. (In fact, I'm sure of it.) Say goodbye to 120F and hello to "May gray and June gloom!" (Btw, it's 70F here, now...)