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Good points made by all.
I will try to argue less with Ranquility, though we do not see eye to eye...
Tree hugger? Yes! I love trees. I love nature, and feel ecosystems that have been in existence for millennia deserve respect. (I have been able to manage that attitude as a forest land owner, while earning a modest living as a logger, sawmill operator, log and timber.frame builder, and one who has heated 100% with wood for decades. I have 10's of thousands of hours of making sawdust under my belt.. It is always forest first! The only way to achieve balance and harmony as a critter on mother earth..)
For me "fish first..man second"
Real simple.. Don't bite the hand that feeds you..
We are prepared to live with water restrictions, too. But there are some areas covered by the DWR that prohibit all outside watering for a new home build. Guessing that would be considered excessive by pretty much any homeowner.
And some (if not all, not sure about that) hobby farmers on newly purchased land or landowners in the DWR area wanting to water for a new use (livestock or crops, for example) are outta luck. No can do. That would totally suck as a hobby farmer.
I am all for protecting salmon as a resource and a heritage. I am hoping the DWR is a process in flux and that the balance required to preserve salmon while enabling residents to live freely with a respect for this resource will evolve to the benefit of both.
We are very happy with our land purchase outside the DWR area. Doesn't mean we will squander water but that we are less restricted. I want to be able to adequately water our newly seeded lawn and landscape plants...even drought tolerant plants need plenty to drink to get a good start. And fill the kiddie pool for the dogs.
Can't rep you any more so I will say exelent post!
So happy you made an informed purchase. ( I agree quite extream restrictions.)
I get a bug up my butt, that they are even selling land in areas with that kind of restriction. Get the feeling those developers are looking for suckers to dump that.land on.
I feel bad for some one that buys a parcel, thinking they can garden and feed themselves home grown food, that find out otherwise.
I sure hope realitors and developers are being up front with the true brevity of the restriction in that small specific area.
BellaDL..
Felt you needed to know.. Just be an educated buyer!
We get our water from the city of Sequim. But I believe the water regulations that are in or will be in place in the Dungeness Valley only effects wells and usage amounts.
There you have it. Yes the DWR affects wells and usage amounts from those wells. I imagine many transplanted folks are coming from areas where a private well means you pay plenty up front for that well and then enjoy unlimited fee-free water from that well for the duration. It can be a rude awakening to build in the Sequim area, pay plenty up front for a well installation and then have to pay to extract water from your own well and/or be limited to how much water you can extract from your own well. But there is no way around it that I can see.
People have their preferences. Personally I prefer good quality well water over treated city water. Where we live there is a huge taste difference and, IMO, a health difference.
From our experience as real estate buyers in the Sequim area, water is a huge issue.
Since the only statement thisplacesucks made was to agree with my post, I would like to clarify that what I wrote was only to state my perception and position. Stating that global warming is not universally accepted does not mean that it is debatable. There are overwhelming supporting scientific facts, and the opponents have grudgingly accepted its presence. Now, the 'debate' has moved to what are the causes!
I'd love to think that there is only a small group of 'politically or religiously focused people in the US' who do not take global warming seriously but the stats show otherwise.
Only 47% of the public think global warming is a serious problem vs 70% scientis, and 13% of the public think that it is not a problem and even 2% of scientists think that it is not a problem! Hmm, I have to wonder whether some of the scientists in this minority group work for the big oil companies ;-)
Anyway, this forum is certainly not a place to argue or debate about climate or politic or other problems. There are enough problems and discord in the world. I am just very thankful that there are so many helpful people. I have learned a lot about these OP areas and looking forward to our visit in less than two weeks.
Best regards,
I agree, not a debate for your fact finding thread!
Can't rep you any more so I will say exelent post!
So happy you made an informed purchase. ( I agree quite extream restrictions.)
I get a bug up my butt, that they are even selling land in areas with that kind of restriction. Get the feeling those developers are looking for suckers to dump that.land on.
I feel bad for some one that buys a parcel, thinking they can garden and feed themselves home grown food, that find out otherwise.
I sure hope realitors and developers are being up front with the true brevity of the restriction in that small specific area.
BellaDL..
Felt you needed to know.. Just be an educated buyer!
Thanks TT! I can't rep you any more either.
Especially when lots of these folks are retirees with their dashed dream in hand. Using the average realtor as a buyer's agent can be dicey...they make their income on sales and some just want any sale they can get as opposed to a happy sale that helps to build a client base. I am sure some realtors are being up front and others...
We have a white Thanksgiving here! Our first snowstorm yesterday dumped at least 8" of wet snow. The snow blower started but did not throw snow so we had to shovel to get the car up the sloped driveway to the garage. If we can not fix the snow blower, we will have to resort to use snow plowing service for big snow storms in our hopefully last winter in the Northeast.
In checking houses, we will certainly consider the water situation along with other issues such as possible coliform well water contamination (as informed by jumpindogs).
We sent our real estate agent a list of over 30 potential homes which I combed through zillow, trulia, sequim-homes etc and was disappointed to see 1/3 of them was no longer available. The disappearing ones were all at or near the top of our list including one which was listed less than 3 weeks ago!
I decided to expand our search to Port Townsend and nearby towns. It was slim picking in PT not sure because our criteria of >1A property or <$400K. We did find a very nice 5.4A property in Chimacum near Lake Anderson. It is only 10 minutes to the airport and 20 minutes to the Rat Island Rowing club boat house (in PT Northwest Maritime center). I checked Port Hadlock weather and found that it is quite similar to Port Townsend so I expect Chimacum would be the same. The location is definitely not 'in town' but we don't shop often so I think it will not be an issue. The location advantage that I can see over Port Angeles/Sequim is that it will cut back the travel time to Seattle.
We also extend our search to a 25A property in Joyce. It is probably the farthest west of Port Angeles that we want to check. Google map shows it is 22 minutes to William Fairchild International Airport. The large property sparked my imagination of having our own airstrip. It is certainly doable but not sure whether we are ambitious enough to embark on the big project of building one!
We are scheduled to see 5 or so properties in Port Angeles area then 6 or so in Sequim before the last one in Chimacum. Those are the only 'checkable' ones. With all or most our top rated 4 & 3.5 stars houses were gone from our list, we had to dip down to the 3 stars and few 2.5 stars to come up with the 12. We will drive around to check the remaining properties to see if any of them are worth seeing in spite of some drawbacks such as a bit too old (built before 1990), too big (>2,500 sq. feet. I set our range between 1,500-2,500sq feet), or too small (some properties are <1A but have nice views or very close to the airport).
It is very unlikely that we will find a perfect property that we will make an offer this time, but our actual relocation is at least a year away. It's good to have a feel for the area, housing market etc in this trip. If our visit confirms the OP is the right place, we will be back in the spring or maybe even earlier to check a great property before it slips away.
We have a white Thanksgiving here! Our first snowstorm yesterday dumped at least 8" of wet snow. The snow blower started but did not throw snow so we had to shovel to get the car up the sloped driveway to the garage. If we can not fix the snow blower, we will have to resort to use snow plowing service for big snow storms in our hopefully last winter in the Northeast.
In checking houses, we will certainly consider the water situation along with other issues such as possible coliform well water contamination (as informed by jumpindogs).
We sent our real estate agent a list of over 30 potential homes which I combed through zillow, trulia, sequim-homes etc and was disappointed to see 1/3 of them was no longer available. The disappearing ones were all at or near the top of our list including one which was listed less than 3 weeks ago!
I decided to expand our search to Port Townsend and nearby towns. It was slim picking in PT not sure because our criteria of >1A property or <$400K. We did find a very nice 5.4A property in Chimacum near Lake Anderson. It is only 10 minutes to the airport and 20 minutes to the Rat Island Rowing club boat house (in PT Northwest Maritime center). I checked Port Hadlock weather and found that it is quite similar to Port Townsend so I expect Chimacum would be the same. The location is definitely not 'in town' but we don't shop often so I think it will not be an issue. The location advantage that I can see over Port Angeles/Sequim is that it will cut back the travel time to Seattle.
We also extend our search to a 25A property in Joyce. It is probably the farthest west of Port Angeles that we want to check. Google map shows it is 22 minutes to William Fairchild International Airport. The large property sparked my imagination of having our own airstrip. It is certainly doable but not sure whether we are ambitious enough to embark on the big project of building one!
We are scheduled to see 5 or so properties in Port Angeles area then 6 or so in Sequim before the last one in Chimacum. Those are the only 'checkable' ones. With all or most our top rated 4 & 3.5 stars houses were gone from our list, we had to dip down to the 3 stars and few 2.5 stars to come up with the 12. We will drive around to check the remaining properties to see if any of them are worth seeing in spite of some drawbacks such as a bit too old (built before 1990), too big (>2,500 sq. feet. I set our range between 1,500-2,500sq feet), or too small (some properties are <1A but have nice views or very close to the airport).
It is very unlikely that we will find a perfect property that we will make an offer this time, but our actual relocation is at least a year away. It's good to have a feel for the area, housing market etc in this trip. If our visit confirms the OP is the right place, we will be back in the spring or maybe even earlier to check a great property before it slips away.
Our Thanksgiving is white too. And cold. Seems like we bypassed November and December and jumped right into January! And now that I am more cognizant of cloudy days, it's interesting how many cloudy winter days we have here in WI. I never really noticed before.
Sorry to hear that your top rated properties are no longer available. The housing marker in the Sequim area has picked up a bit so that's not surprising. But more could become available between now and your trip so keep checking. Getting to know your buyer's agent so that they have a good feel for what you want will really help cause then they can alert you to gems that come on the market. Hard to do from such a distance but if you can swing a trip on short notice and are willing to offer quickly then you have the upper hand.
And you never know. We did not expect to buy property on our first visit to Sequim either but everything fell into place. The perfect house could be listed while you are there.
A blessed Thanksgiving to my C-D friends! We have so much to be thankful for.
62 and sunny today..
Did see omnipresent dark clouds to the south. (Very typical)
Rain south of the Quimper peninsula increases rapidly the further south of PT you get. Same with west of Sequim. Every mile west of Port Angles an inch more rain.
Personally that Anderson lake area is kinda remote and mountainous terrain. Lots.of dense forest too. I love Chimacum. Very salt of the earth blue collar. Great cenex for getting diesel.. Great little market.. But Chimacum valley is different weather pattern, than say Sequim or Port Townsend.
Maybe Check out Kala point north of Irondale by the airport. Otherwise I would suggest staying the thumb, north of the airport. Port Townsend proper or over by the golf course by Discovery bay in your scouting trip. Think north, but not on the water.
We just got back to NY today and were relieved that our driveway was not covered in a foot of snow! The backyard was all white but most of the snow on the driveway had melted.
It was grey sky with rain pretty much every day during our stay. We lucked out with only light 'mizzle' and occasional sunshine the days that we did a lot of walking to visit the airports, boat houses and checking out houses. We mainly drove around in the two days with somewhat heavier downpour so it wasn't too bad. The locals told that the mostly gray sky and heavy rains were atypical of Sequim/Port Angeles area.
We checked out 5 houses in Port Angeles and liked one very much (high quality custom built, right house layout & size for us and fantastic water/mountain view) but only about 40% of the 1.7A lot was usable, the rest was in a steep, almost 90 degrees drop.
We had planned to see 6 houses in Sequim. Our buyer agent did the preliminary drive by check for us and told us 3 of the 6 were closed to busy road. We ruled out the remaining 3 after checking them out ourselves and found that in spite of being >1A, these houses had no privacy and were very close to neighbor houses. You could probably see the advertised 'mountain view’ by craning your neck to get a peek-a-boo view past some walls or roofs!
It appeared that houses in Sequim were priced at 15-20% higher than in Port Angeles. Our buyer agent told us that housing prices in Sequim shot up after it was named the top retirement spot by a certain magazine or website! We decided to up our housing price range in Sequim to $450-$500K and checked out some houses on the hills instead of in the valley. They are nice and some have good views but almost all the ones currently for sale are the ones in the 'ditch' side. The rocky, hilly locations are not suitable for our desire to have a small flat garden spot, and the tony neighborhood is definitely not a place for a chicken coop ;-).
We also checked out few properties with acreage from 5 to 25A but they are either a bit too far (near Joyce) or the houses were not too our liking (weird layout, needing work etc). There was a 16.5A property with a beautiful Japanese style house at the south end of Port Townsend which we absolutely loved and wanted to buy it the moment we found it online. Unfortunately, in spite of being on the market for several months, it was snapped up few days after a price drop and before our discovery. Since it was still pending, we managed to snag an appointment to see the place in person & it was even nicer than the pictures and description. We made a 'Hail Mary' backup offer and was quite disappointed to see it was officially off market with the closing took place last Thursday!
So we left the Olympic Peninsula empty handed but gained tremendous insights about these towns. We were glad that we did experience probably the 'worst' weather. I did have a sense of 'cabin fever' but was assured by the locals that the heavy rains were not common. Even in the worst days like last Wednesday and Thursday, the blue skies and a bit of sun did come out once in a while even when we driving west seeing Lake Crescent and along the shore all the way to Neah Bay.
Just based on the sizes of trees and the amount of mosses on roofs, rocks and trees, Sequim is definitely drier than Port Angeles and south of Port Townsend (the edges of the blue hole). However, all during last week, it appeared that the blue hole did move around and we experienced periods of sunshine/blue skies in all 3 towns. Most importantly, all the pilots whom we talked to at William Fairchild International (Port Angeles), Sequim Valley and Jefferson County International Airport (Port Townsend) told us that they are rarely grounded by the weather. I do not know how Sequim road sides and yards look in the dry summer months but there was absolutely no evidence of draughts anywhere, and quite a few of houses in Sequim in the Dungeness water rule area have North facing roofs covered with mosses.
We stayed the first 3 days at a b-n-b bluff house in Port Angeles with big trees and beautiful water view. The last three days were at another b-n-b in Sequim valley with a nice big backyard for garden, chicken coop and Mountain View. Yesterday, we explored Port Townsend downtown, Fort Worden state park and drove around to check out houses both with acreage outside of the city and Kala Point. The houses in Kala Point community are quite charming but the lots are small, very shaded with tall trees. The beautiful tall trees are both home assets and liabilities. The day before, there were strong winds so many broken branches. The city/community did a great job of cleaning the roads but the damages were still evident including a big 40' or so tree lying across a house!
Our short stays and visits are certainly not sufficient for us to have informed opinions about the 3 towns. However, what we saw and experienced did leave some impressions about each place. Port Angeles was much nicer than what we read. We found it to be clean, safe and the people were very friendly. We were somewhat disappointed about Sequim. We were not quite sure where the center of town was besides shopping centers and big box stores. Our encounter with some very old folks dining at Nourish Sequim made us question whether it would be a good idea to live in an area with mostly folks our ages or older! We have had great experience in groups or settings of mixed ages and would love to continue interacting with younger folks and children. We only spent 1 1/2 days in Port Townsend (half a day checking out properties including the beautiful home which we could not own and one day walking/driving around the town) but were very impressed with the place. A city/town with a very nice public rest room scores very high on our list. The beautiful Victorian homes, the park and beaches are very nice to see and experience. We did not see many people walking around on the streets or beaches. The ones which we saw looked trim, fit, healthy and did not appear to be pot smoking ex hippies ;-)
We may change our minds later with more information. For now, it appears that we will focus our house hunting efforts on either the west end of Port Angeles or the south end of Port Townsend. Both locations are close enough to the airports and boat houses, and we are more likely to find home with acreage at reasonable prices.
Sorry about the weather. It was pretty intense on the entire west coast from Canada to central California. A major pinapple.express! (Note we broke.some record highs, 60 some degrees is not normal. 50 something is... Pretty big.storms, not just one but 3 last week. Like you said, in a.way it is good you got to experience an big storm.system. (I think.we were rain shadowing earlier in the week storm, with mizzle to light rain while.other areas were.getting many inches. )//Also the classic just before sunset clear sky effect. (I love that).
We are south west of port Townsend .but still in the zip.code. So happy to.help with sharing opinion in that area.
I will say I notice just a little more rain every mile south of port townsend, just like every mile west of Sequim. We frequent Port Hadlock and Chimacum and notice it may.be raining a bit more than home. (No big deal just subtle.minor observations. Other factors trump the difference. IMO)
Did you get out by the golf course/ discovery bay area.past 4 corners? Ie Cape.George...? Areas with tasteful creative newer homes not all in dark holes. .It is my opinion it is important to get some southern and southwest light on your land.. (Everyone comments lusts after the fact we get the last few rays of sun. (It sounds as if you are on the right track with not being in a ditch or covered with trees. Which is good.)
Chickens and gardens.. Now your taking my language..
Sounds like a productive trip.. Bummer that property was gone. Their will be another, maybe even better..
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