Washington State relocation questions (Bellevue, Olympia: for rent, condo, assessor)

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

My nephew took his IT job from Bellevue to Las Vegas, where he was able to buy a house, which he couldn't have done up here. His employer is perfectly fine with the arrangement.

But now he's stuck living in LV. Has he gone into shock from the summer heat yet? The dry air drying out your eyes, nose, mouth? That's a radical transition: from the moist PNW to the Nevada desert! Big A/C bills. Few trees. Completely different landscape.

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

But now he's stuck living in LV. Has he gone into shock from the summer heat yet? The dry air drying out your eyes, nose, mouth? That's a radical transition: from the moist PNW to the Nevada desert! Big A/C bills. Few trees. Completely different landscape.

But he owns a house and is building equity! My sister and niece are also down there. And a grand nephew and two grand nieces, all under six. While my sister grew up in Seattle, her family hasn't lived there since the '90s. They are basically from California (Fresno and Sacramento). My nephew moved back to Seattle for a few years, before decamping to LV.

For eight months of the year, you just go from one air-conditioned space to another. The rest of the year is fairly "seasonal".

[805gardengal]

Thank you for the thoughts on this. Between the input here and a deeper dive into the housing costs right now it seems I need to go back to the drawing board. Coming from a life long residency on the central coast of California I'm accustomed to outrageous housing costs and skyrocketing values... however in comparison to our visit there four years ago and now it's on a different level. I never thought the salaries vs cost of living would be worse there than here! Thank you all for your input.

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by CalWorth

I have always liked the look of Aberdeen, there are some cool-looking houses there. I hope it stays affordable, but I know what those houses were valued at a few years ago. I guess I will always be sensitive to parasitic flippers. It happened in my pleasant, middle-class neighborhood in SoCal where I lived 20+ years, during the Crash, & changed my neighborhood forever. And it has happened where I live now. Greed is never good. I wish the OP luck in this ridiculously inflated market.

Edit: I decided to look up the sales history on the listings that CrazyDonkey provided. I do this with any real estate I look at, including where I live now & lived in the past. I don’t think anything can justify a 400% price increase in a house that was purchased just a few months before, but it happens…a lot. That is greed.

When someone sells to move up, downsize, or just relocate, they have to get as much as they can from their equity to minimize their payments on the new home. With flippers, it's maximizing the profit, and that's just business. In most cases the flipper's profit sounds great but is not real. They bought cheap because the house had faults, it needed work, was foreclosed, or an estate left in a mess. They had to spend a lot of money getting it ready to sell. When you compare the sale price today to the sale price a few months before it doesn't reflect their costs getting it ready. Still, I personally prefer what the Habitat for Humanity people are doing, and wish that could be expanded to let lower income buyers take the "flippable" homes and help renovate them to live in.

[CalWorth]

Originally Posted by 805gardengal

Thank you for the thoughts on this. Between the input here and a deeper dive into the housing costs right now it seems I need to go back to the drawing board. Coming from a life long residency on the central coast of California I'm accustomed to outrageous housing costs and skyrocketing values... however in comparison to our visit there four years ago and now it's on a different level. I never thought the salaries vs cost of living would be worse there than here! Thank you all for your input.

Thanks for coming back, I wish the news had not been so discouraging. If you visited Washington 4 years ago, yes, everything was still less expensive, but climbing, & it all just went crazy when Covid hit, at least that’s the excuse. As a former Californian, I feel for you. Don’t give up. I wish the best for you & your child.

[Ultrarunner]

My

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

On the City-data crime index it shows Bremerton at 262.1, compare to nearby Gig Harbor at 226.4, Poulsbo 128.1, Lacey WA 170.6. I have a co-worker living there and a former boss lived there, both avoided certain parts of town. I've always been sensitive to crime rates since living in Oakland CA years ago, here in Sammamish it's 44.6.

https://www.city-data.com/crime/crim...ashington.html

Last 3 weeks working near Olympia and connected with some longtime friends lamenting the direction things are going.

All I can say is it is a matter of prospective.

In my part of California businesses are closing, property vacant, uptick of graffiti and trash and many cities are spending increased amounts on homeless camps... SF Bay Area.

I'm daily in contact with fire or police on the job and today it was both... A police call was rare and fire never when I started working here... just how things change

Being in Washington was a breath of fresh air literally and figuratively... even though locals repeatedly told me they are unhappy the direction things are going.

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

But now he's stuck living in LV. Has he gone into shock from the summer heat yet? The dry air drying out your eyes, nose, mouth? That's a radical transition: from the moist PNW to the Nevada desert! Big A/C bills. Few trees. Completely different landscape.

Maybe a change of pace?

Three of my South Sounds neighbors have kids in college... one San Diego and two in Arizona. They wanted to try something different.

My niece and her friends in California are thinking Oregon or Washington for school.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Ultrarunner

Maybe a change of pace?

Three of my South Sounds neighbors have kids in college... one San Diego and two in Arizona. They wanted to try something different.

My niece and her friends in California are thinking Oregon or Washington for school.

Well, I'm a Californian who went to the UW for college, and stayed! The UW's a good school. I wanted a change in the weather; sunshine nearly year 'round gets boring. I wanted some variety without leaving the W Coast. I got it in Seattle!
The UW also had a better Russian/Slavic dept. than UC Berkeley, and a Russian language dorm. It also had everything else I was interested in, that Berkeley had: Linguistics, Ethnomusicology, lots of foreign languages, Oceanography, a huge variety of course offerings.

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by 805gardengal

Between the input here and a deeper dive into the housing costs right now it seems I need to go back to the drawing board.

Yeah, at your budget (<$300k), the choices are limited. Not that it can't be done, but you'd need to compromise on location, square-footage, lot-size, etc. If you could raise your budget $50-$100k, you'd have a lot more choices.

On the other hand, markets can be volatile. Maybe keep an eye on it and see whether current prices stick.

[rkcarguy]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

But now he's stuck living in LV. Has he gone into shock from the summer heat yet? The dry air drying out your eyes, nose, mouth? That's a radical transition: from the moist PNW to the Nevada desert! Big A/C bills. Few trees. Completely different landscape.

Unfortunately for many, the cost of housing is so bad in WA that there isn't any "I can do without X & Y and make it work". People simply won't get approved for housing they can afford, the cost/income ratio's are too out of whack with too much out of state money driving the market. They go where the math works, it's that simple. Sacrifices in climate often come with that.