Does Olympia sound about right for us? (Seattle, Tacoma: real estate, rentals)

[soulpatch]

I am retiring at the age of 50 at the end of next year. My twins will be 8 at the time.
My wife has her Masters and is credentialed in Spanish and Cross Cultural education.
She currently homeschools our kids.
My retirement from my Fire Dept. job will pay me post CA taxes around $4300/month net. I am not certain of the overall tax structure in WA.
Rentals and the cost of living in Olympia seem to make this doable, especially if either of us work part time.
My wife also writes and I would rather she pursue that passion and I would work a job where I slept in my own bed at night and didn't deal in tragedy daily.
According to a cost of living calculator, subjective as that might be, I would only need to make up another $500-$550/month to live at the same standard as my pre-retirement income.

Since we do live in San Diego we are used to having many museum, parks, entertainment (sushi, dancing, live music, theater, skate parks, biking...etc) available to us.
I am certain Seattle has all those things but it also comes with a higher price tag and Olympia looks truly beautiful and like an excellent community to raise my family.
My co-worker grew up not far from there and he loves it.

[NW Crow]

There is a good chance it could work for you.

Olympia is considered by many to be a fine mid-sized place to raise kids. It has a good level of parks, shopping, restaurants, club activities, etc. for a metro of about 250,000 people but it won't have the quantity and diversity of cultural options that San Diego has. Especially on nightlife.

There is typically about a dozen or two newspaper calendar listings per weekend. One or two plays, a handful of live music options, a few community get-togethers, a couple dancing options and a handful or two of other happenings, mostly small scale and locally based. Some touring events make it to the fine arts center (couple a month at most) and some lower level vintage touring music acts make it to nearby casinos. If you want hundreds of organized weekend activity choices, you need to drive 1 - 1.5 hours (depending on traffic) up to Seattle metro or some people take advantage of options found in Tacoma. If you only want or have time for that stuff every now and then, Olympia should be fine. If you need that level of variety and want to access it a lot, then you either need to accept the time & expense of driving up to it or perhaps look into suburbs of Seattle. There are some options with housing prices not that different from Olympia. Could be trade-offs between being near the action and quiet and sometimes safety, but some carefully selected Seattle suburbs might give you the balance you want.

[soulpatch]

I would greatly appreciate some recommendations for those Seattle suburbs you mention.
My opportunities for work would also be more plentiful in this dire economy.
We are ready for a new paradigm and we have looked from the tip of baja (we just spent a month there) to Oregon where I have family (not really calling to us) to Colorado (where we spent a couple of weeks last year) to now the PNW.
Seems like WA has what we are looking for.
Life is too fleeting for not experiencing new environs.

[NW Crow]

For real estate prices fairly close to Olympia, you might look at Mountlake Terrace (north of seattle), Alderwood Manor (N), Skyway (SE) and Covington (further to the SE). For real estate somewhat higher but may be worth it: Edmonds (N), Woodinville (NE) Issaquah (E), Maple Valley (SE) and Eastgate (E). These places are all at least average on safety. Some are denser and some have more cultural activity of their own but from any of them you can access the greater metro's opportunities.

[soulpatch]

Thanks for the insight. At this juncture we would rent for at least two years to see if everything feels like home.
Olympia seems to have that seaside town groove and my family likes that.
Of course, I could be sorely mistaken since I have never been there yet.
Seems like there are plenty of nice rentals for under $1400/month.
My problem, now somewhat resolved by your input, was not know what to look for in for rent adds. Now I will be able to narrow down some things.
Seattlle...Olympia....neither sounds like a losing proposition.

[Seacove]

Olympia is beautiful.

[soulpatch]

Originally Posted by Seacove

Olympia is beautiful.

My family is in to beautiful!

[NW Crow]

They are re-doing the Olympia waterfront landing area downtown and are adding a new kids play area among other improvements. There is already a splash fountain (that kids play in) and a small lookout tower by the water and some restaurants and a pretty big and successful covered farmers market nearby. There are at least a half dozen other waterfront parks along this southernmost reach of Puget Sound. And lots of small freshwater lakes for boating, fishing and swimming. One lake spills right into the downtown waterfront, with a sidewalk walking path that stretches several miles the other direction to a small river with a couple of water falls. And there is a state forest nearby that has some hills up to 3,000 feet. If you want a standalone community, Olympia is one the best in western Washington. It may not be exciting enough for everyone, but it is nice.

[soulpatch]

It sounds really cool. I don't need a huge city in my back pocket...sounds plenty big to me and amazingly beautiful.
What we need is a community my family is safe in and that my children can grow up in a place where there are decent people and fun and varied things to do and I am no longer stuck on the treadmill of 80-104 hour weeks being a firefighter in SoCal.
We are pretty organically minded and we love doing business with local merchants. We like to keep our dollars in our own community members pockets if possible.
That being said, we are big fans of Costco but they, at least in CA, pay living wages. Plus down here they are carrying a fair amount of organic products.

[Andy]

Olympia has many great neighborhoods for families. The whole area is pretty safe, but some areas are way better than others.

If you come to Olympia, please don't bring any of the insane policies that are destroying California. If you are into that, try Oregon instead