Relocating from Atlanta pointers! (Seattle, Bellevue: real estate, 2013, houses)

[mrhudson]

Good evening,

We're considering relocating to Seattle from Atlanta for work. My wife would be working at Seattle children's and I'd be downtown on 5th ave. We've got a six year old and fourteen year old so schools definitely matter.

We're coming from working at home or 10 minutes from work and therefore would prefer to stay closer, even if that meant a smaller house. In fact, we'd love to downsize, having realized the work and cost maintaining a larger house. Our current neighborhood is very walkable, which we'd like to preserve.

Budget-wise, our current house appreciated to 1.4m over the last few years, thankfully, but we certainly wouldn't mind spending less. Could spend slightly more, sure.

We peeked first at Bellevue/mercer island, etc., given schools......very pricey housing (you know this of course). Nice houses seem pretty huge, too, where we'd love something very nice but more compact......

Any great neighborhoods come to mind for our situation - seeking lower commutes (20-30 mins), good schools, walkable, budget 850k to 1.5m or so?

The best schools are obviously nice to have but we'd be good with something akin to 8/10 too if our other aims are better met.

Thanks for any help pointing our research!

[CrazyDonkey]

Look at Green Lake (Tangletown), E. Wallingford, Roosevelt, Ravenna, Bryant, Wedgewood, View Ridge, Sand Point. Houses are generally older and smaller than on the Eastside (Bellevue, etc.). Roosevelt HS is Seattle's top scoring high school. ES's and MS (Eckstein) also have high scores. A little further north: Maple Leaf, Meadowbrook, Matthews Beach, although the school scores aren't quite as high. Further west: Phinney Ridge, Fremont/Northlake.

https://wwrhah.files.wordpress.com/2...borhoodmap.jpg

Note that GreatSchools' ratings for schools in Washington are entirely based on test scores, which tend to be highly correlated with family income.

[cristina_ell]

There are a couple things to know about commuting around here. Commuting across a bridge is always a problem here. Commuting east and west across the city itself (or from the city to the Eastside) is difficult. There are no east-west freeways in the city and only 520 and 90 going from the city to the suburbs across the lake. Within Seattle itself, you'll find that there are relatively few east-west arterials, and you'll probably be shocked at how small they are. There are no big, broad six-laned roads going east and west. There are very few that are even four lanes. That's part of the character of the city, but it definitely affects commute choices.

If your wife will be at Children's and you'll be downtown, you'd be crazy to live in Bellevue or Mercer Island. One of you will have to cross a bridge for work, no matter what, and I would absolutely not make it so that you both do (which is what living over there would do). I'd suggest living north of the Ship Canal (the waterway that cuts Seattle roughly in half east to west, connecting the lake to the Sound) and a bit more central. Wallingford or Greenlake (or Tangletown) would be a great choice both for the commute and for the walkable neighborhood with some amenities. Living in north central Seattle would give you lots of public transit options into downtown and easy accessibility to I-5 and Aurora to drive downtown. It would give your wife a relatively easy commute east to Children's. As Crazy Donkey said, those would put you in the Roosevelt HS area, which is what you would likely want. If you're interested in IB, Ingraham HS is also not far from there, but I'm not sure how easy it is to get in if you don't live within its boundaries.

There are a couple other miscellaneous things to keep in mind as you look at real estate here. When looking at houses online, be a little more suspicious of those on streets ending in 5 or 0. Those are more likely to be arterials. Likewise, be aware of the address number. Addresses coincide with the crossing streets or avenues, so something with an address like 4502 or 4485 Wallingford Ave would mean that the property is just off of 45th St. Not all streets that end in 5 or 0 are arterials, but the odds are much higher. Even small arterials will be noticeably busier than the neighborhood streets surrounding them (remember what I said about few good east-west roads?). Arterials in real life are denoted by yellow lines down the middle.

Avenues run north and south here and streets run east and west.

The city is divided into different address sections NW, N, NE north of the ship canal, SW, S, and SE south of downtown and at roughly the downtown level you get W and E, with no prefix for the downtown area. These abbreviations will show up on every address, so you can tell at a glance what part of the city an address is in (e.g. N 85th St, or 23rd Ave E).

Good luck with your decision and possible move!

[RustinginSeattle]

What she said.

Wallingford would be a great neighborhood for you. Also check out Montlake (just south of the UW), Phinney Ridge, Queen Anne, and Ravenna.

It's no joke about traffic patterns around here. My husband works downtown and on a really bad traffic day it can take him an hour to drive less than 7 miles north to Ballard.

Also be prepared for sky high childcare costs around here. It's not unusual to pay $2K per month for childcare. It was going to cost us $400/mo just for before school childcare at a community school. That doesn't include after school or summer breaks.

Good luck!

[homesinseattle]

Greetings in Fulton County. I'm a Miami lad originally, relocated here 26 years ago. I believe you will grow to not miss the humidity. Cognizant of your work locations, Capitol Hill, Montake, Wallingford would all be good fits for you. They are each lovely in different ways. Keep in mind, a high percentage of families send their kids to private schools in Seattle. This may expand your neighborhood possibilities. Good luck with the move.

[amaiunmei]

You know, Madison Park is on the pricey side but would be a good mid-point between Children's and downtown.

[homesinseattle]

Agreed amaiunmei. Madison Park is certainly one of the most lovely places in the region, a wonderful little "village" but so close to everything. Initially, I hadn't considered it as it is one of the most expensive places in town. The OP's upper budget limit of $1.5 and their statement that they are okay with a smaller home make this feasible though. I was there with clients yesterday looking at places. The location would be ideal, straight shot up Madison to get downtown and an easy drive through the beautiful Arboretum and over the Montlake Bridge to get to Children's. Mr Hudson, I suggest you just come and spend an afternoon there, wander the little cafes and parks. You may enjoy this: HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

Mercer Island, which you could touch for $1.5 with smaller homes, has great schools. The commute to downtown wouldn't be bad but would be rather brutal to Children's. Roosevelt High school (a fine school), on the North side of Seattle, would be the best rated public high school within your geographic needs, if you are committed to public schools. Wallingford would be a great neighborhood for Roosevelt and relatively easy access to your jobs. You will also find though, as a previous poster noted, that school ratings can be skewed. My strong suggestion is to visit the schools, chat with the administration, you will generally find very wonderful, committed people. Your comment about walkability reainforces the notion of Madison Park, Wallingford and Capitol Hill. They are all fantastic places in that regard. Mercer Island, not so much.

Lastly, buying for say $1 million instead of $1.5 would preserve some funds in case you chose the private school route, there are some excellent ones in town. I'm sure your future Seattle work colleagues would concur.

[amaiunmei]

Yeah, I was also thinking that Madison Park has a dedicated bus that goes directly into downtown -- Route 11 - King County Metro Transit. Taking the bus could help save on the cost of parking in downtown Seattle (which is pricey).

Also, the wife could get to Childrens Hospital pretty easily by driving through the Arboretum. There aren't a lot of places where you can get across the ship canal in 20-30 minutes, but outside of UW sporting events, it seems very reasonable to expect the wife to get from Madison Park to Childrens in their stated time frame.

It's also a very village-y place, and it's right by the water. So, it's nice. It's compact, but nice. Capitol Hill is nearby for bars and grocery stores and whatnot, but there are just enough services in Madison Park that you could stay close to home and not trek the arduous 15 blocks west to Cap Hill.

[CrazyDonkey]

The primary issue with the Madison Park to Children's commute is that the shortcut through the Arboretum can be a bottleneck. They're going to eliminate the Arboretum entrance onto 520, which will move the bottleneck to the 520 exchange on Montlake.

As part of the Move Seattle measure that passed they will be adding a RapidRide (BRT) line from Madison Valley to Downtown. Won't run all the way from Madison Park, but the wife could drop the hubby off. My guess is that the #11 will become a shuttle or be redirected down John Street to the Capitol Hill light rail station. The public high school is Garfield, which, although it has a more diverse student body and lower test scores, has excellent AP and jazz music programs (Roosevelt also has a nationally top-ranked jazz band).

There will also be a RapidRide line added down Roosevelt and Eastlake to Downtown. There will also eventually be a light rail station in Roosevelt (2021). This could argue for looking at the Roosevelt neighborhood first, over areas further west or east.

Another factor is that the Seattle School District will be reopening a renovated Lincoln High School (my alma mater - go Lynx!) in Wallingford for the 2019-20 school year. It will absorb attendance areas currently served by Roosevelt HS and Ballard HS, which means the latter's attendance areas will shift north. This could mean that areas such as Maple Leaf, currently feeding Ingraham HS, will feed Roosevelt HS instead, for instance.

On the other hand, John Stanford International ES and Hamilton International MS in Wallingford are very high scoring schools that offer immersion programs in Japanese and Spanish, which should carry over to Lincoln when it reopens.

[cristina_ell]

I'd think carefully about Madison Park, Madrona, or Capitol Hill. On paper they all look like easy commutes to downtown and Children's, but Montlake is an unbelievable bottleneck and it will not likely be getting any better with the 520 bridge changes and the new light-rail station (station = more buses in that area, plus cars stopping to let passengers off). I have to travel it regularly, and unless mr.hudson's wife is commuting at very off times, traffic will be a much bigger issue than you might expect. I regularly see it take 45 minutes to get from the U Village to the Montlake Bridge, particularly at rush hours or in summer when the bridge goes up repeatedly for boats. A big question is whether the wife will be on call at Children's and taking call from home with a need to get to the hospital quickly. If so, then I'd rule out south of the ship canal and instead look at View Ridge, Hawthorn Hills, and Laurelhurst. Those neighborhoods all offer good transit access to downtown with easy proximity to Children's.