Sammamish home - too good to be true??

[revelated]

Originally Posted by EvilCookie

Yeah that's the unfortunate thing about most american suburbs in general as I see it. If choosing from good schools, walkability/stuff to do, and more or less affordable housing, you can only have two of the three in most cases. Bellevue is perfect in my opinion with great schools and the urban vibe, but the prices are absolutely insane. Sammamish has homes at decent prices, schools, safety etc, but is isolated and boring. Sigh.

I don't think that's the equation. At least not in this metro. Here, it seems to be :

• Distance from your job
• Price for your living space
• Level of peace and quiet
• Level of general safety

Take Ballard. A colleague just bought what I would consider a small condo for almost $400k in Ballard. Takes him about 30 minutes to get to work. It's perfect for him and his wife, but all I see is a sky high price for very little, and a potential for low resale value in the future. Ballard is certainly not the safest area, and it's so crowded I can't imagine the noise sometimes.

Contrast with me. I bought a house in Auburn. Massive, under $300k. Since its only me, it might seem overkill, but selling my house won't be nearly as difficult, and I refused to share walls/floors/ceilings with anyone anymore. It's one of the safest communities, and with the exception of the occasional distant train horn, extremely quiet and peaceful. Patrolled by Auburn police, very low crime. However, on a 'good' day I have a 45 - 50 minute commute. Worst case scenario : 2 hours, because people don't know how to drive and get into silly accidents, then rubberneckers back things up.

I feel that rating school systems is overrated (no pun intended). A school's quality is almost always indicated by the community it's in. If it's a craphole of a neighborhood, the school will be the same. Thus why Lakeland Hills Elementary is so highly regarded.

[kaonevar]

Originally Posted by revelated

Take Ballard. A colleague just bought what I would consider a small condo for almost $400k in Ballard. Takes him about 30 minutes to get to work. It's perfect for him and his wife, but all I see is a sky high price for very little, and a potential for low resale value in the future. Ballard is certainly not the safest area, and it's so crowded I can't imagine the noise sometimes.

Contrast with me. I bought a house in Auburn. Massive, under $300k. Since its only me, it might seem overkill, but selling my house won't be nearly as difficult, and I refused to share walls/floors/ceilings with anyone anymore. It's one of the safest communities, and with the exception of the occasional distant train horn, extremely quiet and peaceful. Patrolled by Auburn police, very low crime. However, on a 'good' day I have a 45 - 50 minute commute. Worst case scenario : 2 hours, because people don't know how to drive and get into silly accidents, then rubberneckers back things up.

You see little value in the condo in Ballard, but think on it this way--Seattle can't expand much, so vertical expansion will be how they pack all those new Seattle folks into areas close to their work.
Since so many work downtown or in SLU (Amazon), being close to that location is important. Since traffic is only getting worse, areas close to SLU and downtown are premium. That means condos in Queen Anne, SLU, Magnolia, etc. that are within 5-7 miles of that area, are only going to become more of a hot commodity. Since demand drives price, the prices will go up.
In just 1 year, the value on our condo has gone up 15% over what we paid for it.

Honestly, while your house sounds awesome, a 1-2 hour commute sounds horrid. I'd rather pay to be closer and not lose hours of my life in soul-sucking traffic.

Just my two cents.

[Hemlock140]

The thing about Ballard is that it has some of the best schools in Seattle, an easy commute, and plenty of entertainment options without the crime of the downtown area/Belltown. With the recent construction of highrise apartments and now row houses, there is new rental space available. With those being built in places that had single family homes before, the prices for those houses left will go up even faster as they become more scarce. In one case I know of a smaller 100+ year old house sold for $500K in 2010, now is at $616,000-$626,000 depending on where you look. Another sold for $403k in 2004, dropped to $382k in the crash, and is now up to $629k.

[mkarch]

Also Ballard is putting in quite a bit of office space within easy walking distance from the core. I doubt Auburn is going to get anything like that in the near future. The area seems to be well on its way to developing into a full urban village where people can live, work and play, which makes it fairly unique. Auburn will probably get some more cheap tract homes and another strip mall with a McDonalds.

[Ira500]

Originally Posted by mkarch

Now this is interesting - I ran a couple of comparisons using the census data from City-Data and found out that many of the in city zip codes have birth rates just as high as Issaquah and Sammamish. 98117, where I'm at is 1.8%, the same as the areas stereotyped as places families flock to. It tapers down slightly as you move south through lower ballard, magnolia, queen anne and drops sharply downtown (big surprise) and towards capitol hill/CD (98102). I would not have guessed that north ballard/ sunset hill/north beach/greenwood were just as "fertile" as the far east side. But living here it makes sense and we did move here to start a family ourselves, with no intention of escaping to the Eastside after the kids arrives.

For a while, families were moving out of Seattle and to the eastside, or Shoreline or Bothell, mostly for schools. The last few years have seen the population grow in most parts of the Seattle area. My son and his wife recently lived in Ballard, and I'd take my grandson to the library or the playground, or to Golden Gardens. These places were constantly teeming with kids and families. They weren't in Ballard 20 years ago. Then, it was " Old people don't live in Ballard. Their parents do." I'm just guessing here, but I'd think that an apartment building would tend to have a higher percentage of households without kids, and downtown Ballard has seen a huge increase in apartment buildings. North Ballard/Sunset Hill/Greenwood have mostly good schools, and have character that tends to be lacking on the eastside. Not everyone wants to live in the suburbs, Amazon has been hiring like crazy, it's an easier commute, and why should you leave if you have kids?
Might be a different story if you're talking about Rainier Beach.

[Big_Steeley]

[quote=EvilCookie;33843589]We're just trying to get a feel for the market while planning our move, and I'm just curious: those familiar with Sammamish, is this a typical price for this type of home there?? Or is it suspiciously cheap? To us, coming from Vancouver, Canada, and then Bay Area, where $640K couldn't even buy you a tear-down, this just seems too good to be true - a home of that size, quality, schools, etc. Tacky decor aside Is it rotting inside or something? LOL.
What's the catch?


A 5-year-old post... interesting.. the neighbor two doors down in the house built two years ago is laughing at the guy who just closed on the house between us that is smaller and $200K more than he paid for his. I don't dare tell him what I paid for mine 27 years ago.


But I can dig it.. even though it's driving my own property value up, my property tax actually went DOWN as these $Mil homes go up all around me and take over the tax load.


Yet even now in 2016 you can still buy decent homes for under $500K in LWSD if you look around, many opportunities to buy "the worst house in the neighborhood"(*) - but hurry, the developers are trying to snatch those up and put two or more $Mil homes on the lot.


The land has instant equity, the home (regardless of its size and condition, built more than 15 years ago), while perfectly livable and enjoyable for as long as you want to live and enjoy it, is a financial liability to a developer. You will be competing with them for buying the property.


If you want to live in it, you'll likely have to pay more than they will, but less than any new one they just finished. That's a sweet spot to be in.





* I didn't buy the worst house in the neighborhood, I bought the only house in the neighborhood. Now, it has turned out, it's the worst house in the neighborhood (at least if you go by purchase price). If you want it, it'll cost you 6 times what I paid for it, and you'll still get a deal AND door-bangers wanting to buy it for more than you paid just to tear it down and rebuild. Heck, buy two, tear one down and redevelop it and you'll live mortgage free until you want to ca$h in and retire.

[cmswazey]

Originally Posted by EvilCookie

We're just trying to get a feel for the market while planning our move, and I'm just curious: those familiar with Sammamish, is this a typical price for this type of home there?? Or is it suspiciously cheap? To us, coming from Vancouver, Canada, and then Bay Area, where $640K couldn't even buy you a tear-down, this just seems too good to be true - a home of that size, quality, schools, etc. Tacky decor aside Is it rotting inside or something? LOL.
What's the catch?

20322 NE 34th Ct, Sammamish, WA 98074 | MLS# 583754 | Redfin

Wow. Doesn't seem cheap to me. It excludes a lot of middle income people who used to be able to buy small to medium sized houses.

[Blondebaerde]

Originally Posted by cmswazey

Wow. Doesn't seem cheap to me. It excludes a lot of middle income people who used to be able to buy small to medium sized houses.

Since it sold for $600K in June 2014, and Zillow Zestimate (if one believes it) now pegs the place at being worth $750K, it's all irrelevant now.

Yes, it's an enormous amount of money. Yes, where I live, NorKirk (Kirkland) is seeing similar weird YoY increases. But hey: two up and coming neighborhoods where the builders flatten anything that even looks run-down or out of style, because as the last guy said: it's the dirt, man.

They dynamited a miserable shack at the base of our hill/block the other year, and finished off a $2M or so refurb about a year ago. Works for me, raises my property value a few doors down, but kiss goodbye any semblance of old Seattle friendly neighborhood or affordability for anyone less than general manager level at a big tech firm.

We should start calling places like Wallingford, Ravenna, and similar in Seattle-proper plus most of Eastside "Little Medina," at least from a pricing standpoint.

[evilcart]

Originally Posted by Ira500

For a while, families were moving out of Seattle and to the eastside, or Shoreline or Bothell, mostly for schools. .

Yep those people still do but mostly now it is the well monied ones. Eastside prices have raced ahead.