Thoughts/Info on Finn Hill? (Bellevue, Redmond: to rent, house, buying)

[running-girl]

My husband was recently hired by MS, so I'll be moving up there when our house sells. After he has spent the last couple of weeks driving in traffic, we've decided to try to stay relatively close to his office. I just spent a weekend up there getting familiar with areas on the Eastside--we really liked a few areas: Kirkland was our favorite, but we also liked northern Sammamish near Sahalee, Education Hill, and areas of Bellevue and Redmond. Now that I'm back home, someone just mentioned the Finn Hill area of Kirkland (we'd like to stay under $650k, so much of Kirkland is out of our price range). Finn Hill seems to have a lot in our price range...anybody know much about it?

By the way, the sticker shock was far worse than I thought it would be! I can't believe there is such thing as an $800k fixer-upper.

And I know many of you recommend renting for a year before buying--we may very well do that. But we don't want our kids to switch schools twice, so if we rent, we want to rent within the school boundaries where we think we'd really like to live.

[Ira500]

Finn Hill is quite nice, older very well maintained homes, very family oriented, and great express bus service to the MS campus from Finn Hill.

[running-girl]

Thanks, Ira!

[bloggerman]

Originally Posted by running-girl

My husband was recently hired by MS, so I'll be moving up there when our house sells. After he has spent the last couple of weeks driving in traffic, we've decided to try to stay relatively close to his office. I just spent a weekend up there getting familiar with areas on the Eastside--we really liked a few areas: Kirkland was our favorite, but we also liked northern Sammamish near Sahalee, Education Hill, and areas of Bellevue and Redmond. Now that I'm back home, someone just mentioned the Finn Hill area of Kirkland (we'd like to stay under $650k, so much of Kirkland is out of our price range). Finn Hill seems to have a lot in our price range...anybody know much about it?

By the way, the sticker shock was far worse than I thought it would be! I can't believe there is such thing as an $800k fixer-upper.

And I know many of you recommend renting for a year before buying--we may very well do that. But we don't want our kids to switch schools twice, so if we rent, we want to rent within the school boundaries where we think we'd really like to live.

There is also Duvall which is lovely and many of my neighbors do work for M$ and is only a 15 - 30 min commute

[Kmag2OOO]

Don't know much about Finn Hill but I was out driving that area around Christmas some time back and found one of the most breath taking Christmas light displays. Here's to you folks who did that. Awesome.