Median home price in Seattle reaches a half mil. (Bellevue: to rent, insurance)

[wythors]

Business & Technology | Median price for house in Seattle tops $500,000 | Seattle Times Newspaper

Originally Posted by The article referenced above

A worker would have to earn $57 an hour — about $119,000 a year — to afford that Seattle home, according to the Seattle chapter of the Urban Land Institute.

And on the Eastside, a worker needs to earn nearly $152,000 a year to afford a house with the $643,750 median price there in August.

FYI, "Eastside" means Bellevue, Issaquah, Redmond, Kirkland, etc.

[MacFan]

Yep, welcome to Seattle. The housing prices here are absolutely ridiculous and have been for quite some time.

This is a good reminder to people about the real cost of living in Seattle.

[mayfair]

It's crazy. This area is nice but not that nice.

[geometricdisaster]

On the other side of that coin.

Seattle area home = better investment than a lot of areas.

I know, as a frustrated former buyer, it's hard to look at it that way, but once you're in, you'll be happy to see your home increase value, rather than drop.

I've read forums in other metro areas where recent homebuyers are going through the "you mean my house LOST value since I bought it last year" pain.

[CityGirl72]

We bought right at the right time - late 2003

Our house price has doubled! I think we appraise somewhere around 565K. And although our household income is around 150K - I can't IMAGINE us being able to afford the house payment if we bought it today - we barely squeeze by on the 2K/month mortgage.

[ladyjuliek]

I have been trying to get an idea, were I to move there, what my cost of living would actually be. I had estimated - and thought I estimated high - of a cost of living to be 2500 per month. (Keeping in mind that we plan to rent something affordable, not a 2K mortgage.)

But I'm looking at your post... you say your income is 150K. That's definitely more than we can expect, we hope to do around 60-70, so less than half of yours. And you say you squeeze by a 2K mortgage. We'd be looking at a 1K mortgage, or again, about half...

What can be so expensive? I've run a quick list...

Rent = $1100 (high side)
Utilities = $200
Phone = $100
Food = $400
Transit = $200
Insurance = $150
Unknown??? = $500
_________________
$2650

I estimate we could bring home about 565 more than this per month, with taxes out. It doesn't seem completely unreasonable (but then again, nothing on paper ever does.) Are my budget numbers here way off?

(Thanks for any assistance. "Cost of living high" is difficult to be put in numbers, unless you're talking the cost of buying a home - whereas we don't plan to anytime soon.)

[CityGirl72]

If you rent you'll be FINE! I've lived in many expensive cities in my life and renting always gave me more disposable income then ever buying a house

[CityGirl72]

OH and remember it's hard for us because we also spend over 2K on Daycare...

[SaltyDawg]

Seattle is generally 2-3 years behind macro economic trends nationally, and I just don't see these prices being sustainable. This is about year 15 of double digit price growth - our comeuppance is coming.

[41Willys]

If your from Iowa it mite seem crazy. But in the NY/NJ area thats the norm! Heck in NYC thats cheap!! I lived in Colorado from the early 90's to the late 90's and saw a huge house price boom while I was there. Seems to be the norm today in my eye's.