Possibly moving to Kirkland/Redmond Area 52k/yr

[kaonevar]

Originally Posted by Haakon

A holiday week (many people take vacation days) in the summer (all schools out) is not representative of the commute the rest of the year. 405 routinely has 8+ hours of congestion / day.

I-405 misery: 2 megaprojects could tackle chronic delays | The Seattle Times

A 16-mile trip from Lynn*wood to Bellevue, for example, averaged 44 minutes during the morning commute. But to ensure on-time arrival 19 out of 20 days, drivers needed to allow almost 70 minutes.

“Everybody thinks I-5 is the worst, but I-405 is the most congested,” said Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island and chair of the House Transportation Committee.

You just got lucky this week.

Crap. :/ I wonder if it's any better when on it on buses in the carpool/bus lane... Hm.

[Blondebaerde]

Analytical mind says:

Might follow that a financial analysis of average rents vs. percentage of income may be in-order, based on average (home, condo) prices in various areas.

I'd then add in estimates costs for food, utilities, and everything else. I am 100% sure that data is available, someone on this forum pointed it out some months ago.

There is probably sufficient data online at this point to determine average commute times during peak hours (morning, afternoon) and decide if it is "worth it" to live in outlying areas like Mill Creek or Bothell (north) or Renton and Burien (south), which usually have longer commute times. I could be wrong about that, the few times I've idly searched for that kind of information, which should be street-by-street these days considering all the cameras, sensors, etc, I have a hard time finding it easily. Cloud and Big Data-type apps are appearing monthly, however. The WSDOT "average commute times" thing, with confidence intervals (in standard deviations) is not specific enough anymore, thus a partially-obsolete tool. Somewhat useful, just not as useful as it could be. Unless they've updated it recently.

Wouldn't move without doing the above, which should be straightforward given there are only two constraints listed (Home/rent prices, commute times, highest to lowest priority). Usually people have several more, such as "safe" and "good schools" and "lots of fun things to do".

Once the constraints are taken into account, the analysis is actually pretty simple.

[Densi52]

Originally Posted by josie13

I have checked. For one of those newer one-bedroom apartments in Redmond, rents such as 1500, 1600, 1700 and up are expected. Not counting utilities.

Wow. My husband and I were thinking we'd check out a few of the buildings and have lunch at Prime or maybe the Tipsy Cow. Maybe we will just do lunch instead It's hard to see where so many renters will come from.

Thanks.

[josie13]

Originally Posted by Densi52

Wow. My husband and I were thinking we'd check out a few of the buildings and have lunch at Prime or maybe the Tipsy Cow. Maybe we will just do lunch instead It's hard to see where so many renters will come from.

Thanks.

You can get a studio apartment for cheaper. I wish the rents were lower because I'd love to downsize from my home near Redmond and move into a 1-BR in downtown Redmond, but on my income I can't afford to. A studio apartment would be too small for me and my teenager.

You might as well check out the buildings while you're there. It doesn't hurt to look. I know I have!

[arania15]

Thank you all for your advice! I appreciate it a bunch. - - - Been looking and will continue to look into expenses. Now I just have to consider whether or not a cheaper neighborhood might outweigh the potential additional expenses via travel to and from work.

I don't care so much about good schools as I've no family to worry about. I'd love to have things to do in the immediate area (parks/good food/restaurants), but right now I'm thinking that I'll probably be sticking to my lowest common denominator of just finding a cheaper place to live. I don't mind living in a studio as that's what I'm in now. I'd just like it to be bigger than a postage stamp. Is it reasonable to expect to find cheaper rentals via people renting out their mother-in-law suites, guesthouses, etc?