Useful Information if your thinking about moving to the Wenatchee Valley (Bellevue: renting, vacation home)

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Brief write-up about the Wenatchee Valley. Hope this information is helpful for people thinking about moving here. Written last year, but things have not changed much. Home construction is down, but prices are still fairly stable.

We moved to Wenatchee in 1985. We lived in Douglas County for 15 years and 10 years in Chelan. Not sure if your renting or buying, but here are the differences between the two counties.

Electricity is much cheaper in Douglas County. I believe their current rate is just over 2 cents per KW. Chelan is much higher at almost 3.0 cents and they are going to raise it another ten percent starting May 1st.

The fiber connection is much faster in Douglas County, but the area served by fiber is much smaller. In Chelan County, currently 75% of the homes have fiber, though the PUD is slowing the buildout. So if you don't have it now, it will be awhile before you get it!! Douglas County has 100MPS at $40/month for the connection. We pay $40 a month in Chelan, but are speed is only 12MPS.

Water or more specifically irrigation water. Make sure your house has irrigation water or xerixscape. In Douglas County, our outside water bill was $60/year. In Chelan County, without irrigation water our bill is about $150 month. We more for water than electricity for an all electric house.

The library system is outstanding and is the same for both counties. It actually includes Grant, Okanogan and Ferry as well.

The traffic from and to east Wenatchee now is nasty. I would not move into any part of town that would require a commute on the old bridge. The new bridge north of town is great.

One option to look at is living around the loop trail along the Columbia River. That way you can get around the area easily on the bike trail and not deal with traffic much at all.

If you get a house having your backyard face east is a great deal. The wind comes out of the west and the eastern exposure will make it a nice place during the summer evenings. That means also on the west side of the house plant trees and get low e-glass. You will need air conditioning in the Wenatchee Valley.

Property taxes are lower in Chelan County than Douglas County. We did not live within the city limits in either case. Avoid Cashmere for taxes. We moved our vacation home out of the Cashmere School District and into the Cascade School District. Nice trick, since all we moved was the tax line!! Anyway, our property taxes dropped 1300 dollars a year on a 175,000 assessed house.

We moved to Wenatchee for the school system in the 6th grade and we're not sure that was a good decision. Wenatchee is a big school district. Eastmont is smaller and we liked the grade schools there.

Wenatchee has a nice urban core with nice neighborhoods from which you can walk to downtown. There are also the "classic" Bellevue suburbs which sprang up to serve in the realtors words "the poor people from the coast that cannot find housing in the Valley". These are primarily north of the Wenatchee River in the Sunnyslope area. Great views from this area with the only downside being wind in the spring and fires. The area has been evacuated every two or three years due to fires. Great location to live, but you better have a defensible space around your house.

As mentioned earlier the south Wenatchee area is the part to stay away from. Though the Mexican drug violence is starting to spread across town, but so far it has not spread beyond the gangs. Wenatchee use to have "mixed housing", with good homes next to trailers. That is changing as neighborhoods become one or the other. Our east Wenatchee neighborhood went downhill with just one meth family and then a couple of others moved in and we moved out. The area in the past 15 years has started to be segregated by income.

Employment is schools, medical, and state government. Alcoa use to be a large employer, but when BPA took their power away is dropped in numbers. Wenatchee had a great small business base in 1985, but unfortunately the influx of urban refugees has lead to one of every box store known to man locating in the valley. Sad. Retail in everybodies opinion is overbuilt, but so far nobody but K-Mart has gone out of business.

Construction was going good with all the people moving in, but that appears to have slowed significantly. Wenatchee builders have always stopped building at the first sign of a slowdown. Chelan County is running out of land for housing, which is one reason why Douglas County is being developed for housing.

With fiber if you have a high tech job that you can do anywhere Wenatchee is a good place for that sort of thing. Lots of wet-side firemen work over there and live over here. People with jobs that require travel have also set up home offices here.

Hope this helps.