Considering move to Tri Cities area from Florida (Spokane, Kennewick: insurance, low crime)

[1hyplady]

My husband is a well established acupuncture physician & I am a hypnotherapist here in Florida. I am not a humidity fan and since his mother recently passed away, we are looking @ moving to the Pac. NW. I have been reading the posts on the Tri Cities and are planning a visit in September.

Most of the RE listings we see for the area seem to be new housing developments. We are not as interested in a new home as we are in an area with shade trees etc. Florida housing is not the highest in the US. We are looking at paying around $185 to 225K max for a 2 to 3 bdrm/2 ba. We are in our 50's and do not have children so school districts are not a consideration.

We looked online and there appears to be only about 2 - 4 acupuncture physicians in the tri-cities area. Do you think the tri city area would support our professions.

If we were to live out a llittle ways, say close to the wineries, how long a drive would it be into Richland, Kennewick or Pasco?

Thank you for your assistance,
Sheila 1hyplady

[heymikey]

Sorry I haven't visited this forum in a while…

I, too, am not a humidity fan, so I can relate to your wanting to move west. I've lived in Richland nearly all my life, so I'm certainly biased, but it's what I'm familiar with, and for your price range, you might check around the Gold Coast Historic District (Historic Preservation - City of Richland > click "Map" ~1/2 way down the page); it's east of George Washington Way and north of Van Giesen St. These "alphabet" houses (Welcome to the East Benton County Historical Society, left column, Architectural History>Richland>Letter Houses) were built around 1948, and were the town's original "Pill & Drill Hill", mostly Q & R models (3BR/1BA), with a few M (2 BR/1BA) & S (4BR+Study/2BA). Though the Qs & Rs are small by today's standards (1400-1500 sq ft with full basements), many owners have made substantial additions and updates (including extra bathrooms), and the basements are quite dry, eminently "finishable", and can nearly double the house's floor space. Prices are currently running $160-190K. The government built the houses and planted the trees—each street with a different species: we live on Howell Ave, which is lined with sycamores, though some have been replaced. North of Newcomer Ave. are among the first privately built houses, which now have some mature trees. Many are sprawling ramblers on large lots. I don't know what their prices are, but the oldest are now coming on the market as the original owners "age out".

I don't know how busy the local acupuncturists are. I used to go to Dr. Yang, who is quite good, but seems to be semi-retired (office seems open only a few hours/week). Also, his refusal to bill anybody's insurance was a stumbling block for some. The "metro" area population is ~160k—I would think there would be room for one more, but you could probably judge that better than I.

Lots of people enjoy living further out—there must be close to a dozen wineries nearby (≤20 min out), some within the city limits. That would probably preclude shade trees in most places, however. The surrounding area is mostly agriculture and sagebrush, and most of the places further out were more recently built, so the trees will naturally be smaller; houses with mature trees will be older (read, smaller/often run-down).

Write back if I can be of further help!

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by 1hyplady

My husband is a well established acupuncture physician & I am a hypnotherapist here in Florida. I am not a humidity fan and since his mother recently passed away, we are looking @ moving to the Pac. NW. I have been reading the posts on the Tri Cities and are planning a visit in September.

I can understand why you'd leave Florida. What a miserable dump of a state. If I were forced to live there, I'd accelerate all my bad habits that were likely to shorten my days and stop saving for retirement, on the grounds that being an elderly person in Florida would seem to me like living death. Kinder to shoot me. Easiest way to handle that would be to just live in Orlando and drive my own vehicle, and the incredible morons who blast down Semoron Blvd. at stupidly high speeds would put me out of my misery soon enough. You're smart to escape before you become one of them.

Originally Posted by 1hyplady

Most of the RE listings we see for the area seem to be new housing developments. We are not as interested in a new home as we are in an area with shade trees etc. Florida housing is not the highest in the US. We are looking at paying around $185 to 225K max for a 2 to 3 bdrm/2 ba. We are in our 50's and do not have children so school districts are not a consideration.

That's doable. My house is in a 1950s development and is worth about $180K (with panoramic view), though if I were in haste to sell it, I probably wouldn't get that much. If you come prepared to spend $200K, and you don't let people gyp you, you can get what you want.

Originally Posted by 1hyplady

We looked online and there appears to be only about 2 - 4 acupuncture physicians in the tri-cities area. Do you think the tri city area would support our professions.

Maybe or maybe not. This area has really lousy conventional medicine but it's also very culturally conservative and slow to adopt alternative medicine, though a number of chiropractors seem to flourish (they have grown somewhat mainstream in the public view). Most people here would consider 'acupuncture physician' a contradiction in terms. In order to flourish, you would definitely have to be good at marketing--and patient. I would think outside the box, proactively involve myself in the community, and let it happen in the standard, slow Tri-City way. The good news here for your marketing is that local hospitals and doctors are mostly inferior, so more people are desperate enough to try things they have heard might work, whether it's needles stuck in their ears or a healing mallet. To give you an idea, I'm about to start going to Spokane for orthopedic medicine because I've had it with both local hospitals and orthopedic doctors.

Originally Posted by 1hyplady

If we were to live out a llittle ways, say close to the wineries, how long a drive would it be into Richland, Kennewick or Pasco?

Depends which wineries. They surround the Tri-Cities, and some are actually in town. I live in south Kennewick and I'd estimate there are fifty wineries within fifty miles of my house. It would be an error to think of there being an out-of-town winery area where they're mostly concentrated. They're all over--and they produce a lot of good stuff. A great strength of this region is its agricultural produce. We have a lot of great stuff to cook with, if we had more restaurants that took the ball and ran with it. If you like to cook creatively, you'll have a lot of regionally fresh options of high quality.

I like living here, but I don't like big cities or big-city stuff, and I am more of a loner who doesn't really care too much about surrounding himself with a lot of deep thinkers. As long as I can find a few, I'm happy enough, and you can always find a few. I don't look for my community to entertain me. If it had more ethnic dining I'd be glad of it, but it doesn't and it won't and that's the tradeoff for the low crime, low cost of living and generally pleasant population. (Although if you want to see the seamy underbelly of that, read our Craigslist Rants & Raves sometime.)

[M3 Mitch]

Considering what heymikey calls the "Gold Coast Historic Preservation District" - (I would just say the old Alphabet houses - whatever - ) I see a few of them as FSBO and I would think you might get a good deal on one.

Pretty much what jkk said. This place is oddly backwards culturally for a place with so many PhD's. Go figure.

Also echo his comment on the relative dearth of good "regular" doctors - Good dentists, we have, and a few good specialists, but trying to find a good regular garden variety MD is tough.