Living/Working in Kirkland (Seattle, Redmond: rent, insurance, how much)

[Cleopatra1981]

Hello,

I currently live in Naples, FL and considering a move to Washington, King county area. I have a question regarding the cost of living in Kirkland. Would it be possible to live off of $6000 per month? If Kirkland is too expensive, what would be a reasonable place to live if you had to work in Kirkland?

Thank you.

[silverstar23]

I know a guy who can't live on less than $30,000 per month.
I know a guy who can live on $3,000 per month.

[CarlB328]

The average house in Kirkland is probably around 500k or so, so that should give you an idea.

[Inkpoe]

You can rent a place from around 1K to 1700 a month... more if its a big house with land. So, putting aside 2300 for a place plus (very irresponsible use of) utilities... that leaves about ~3,700. I could live off of that very easily with money put into savings.

I don't know about the OP, though. Kinda an impossible question to ask, given we have no information to work from (rent/buy, restaurant/at home cook, public transit/driver, shopper/miser, saver/spender, et. c)

[Hemlock140]

There are plenty of people in Kirkland living on less than that. Like anywhere, for home prices
there is a range from $300,000-2 million there, but I would put the average at less than $500k now, more like $425k. You can do better in some parts of town, such as Kingsgate. There are listings now for as low as $269,000.
Besides housing, everything here is going to cost more than in Florida,
as is most of the west coast.

[Cleopatra1981]

Thank you for your responses.

We are not big spenders, just spending money on usual bills (cars, insurance, cells) and utilities. We are currently renting for $1200, our income is under $6000 and we are making it fine.

I keep gazing at the map of the King coutny area and I see that the distances between towns are not that big. I currently live 10 miles away from my job and it takes me a good 25 minutes to get there with a normal flow of traffic. If I were to live in, for example, Sammamish, is the drive to Kirkland (to work) reasonable?

[Inkpoe]

Originally Posted by Cleopatra1981

If I were to live in, for example, Sammamish, is the drive to Kirkland (to work) reasonable?

It really depends on your amount of patience, how much time you would rather allot for traffic and what time you leave. You also have to factor in the traffic flow. 405 is a parking lot during rush. At least you could try the East Lake Sammamish PKWY to rt 908 (starting in Redmond) to get to Kirkland, but it would definitely involve a lot of stop and go traffic.

[Ira500]

Inkpoe's right. There may not be a large distances between towns, but the roads weren't built for the large increase in population the eastside has seen. East Lake Sammamish Parkway crawls at times. Traffic around Redmond crawls at times. Sammamish is a nice place to live, and people are happy living there. But parts of Kirkand are really nice too. If I were working in Kirkland, I'd do everything I could to keep the commute as short as possible.

[Hemlock140]

Depending on the time of day Sammamish to Kirkland is not bad. Up until about 7:30 am you can go Sahalee to 202 which turns into Redmond way and up to Kirkland near Rose Hill in 20 minutes or less. Coming home, any time after about 3:30 the return trip is a good 30-40 minutes. A lot of it has to do with the many Microsoft employees. They stagger their start/end times and that expands the rush "hour" to about 3 hours. And many of them live in Sammamish and Redmond. Still a lot easier commute than me, and I happily commute from Sammamish to the Seattle waterfront.

[Redline]

500k home in Kirkland is still not great to put it nicely. Homes don't start getting nice until 800k usually. Kingsgate is arguably the "rougher" part of Kirkland. Juanita area is a step up but the nicer parts are around Market St and Houghton. Been living in Kirkland for 7 years.