What are the best areas in the Puget Sound?
7@LazyZombie and I are moving soon. We are currently in Seattle and are looking into anywhere within an hour or so of the city, which opens up pretty much all of the Puget Sound area. We need help narrowing it down to more specific locations. I know we have a nice handful of people in the area and if they are willing to share, I would love to hear about what’s great and what’s not-so-great in their town/neighborhood/general area you are willing to disclose.
@carl669 @KittySprinkles @KDemo @daveinwarsh @JasonToon @anyoneelseintheareathatimforgetting
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kent is actually nice. it’s just outside the city, so not too far away. we’re in the chestnut ridge neighborhood and it’s really nice. sidewalks, street lights, etc. there’s really nothing we don’t like about. it’s got good schools and is centrally located right between tacoma and seattle. lots of good ethnic restaurant. this afghani place opened up about 5 minutes from us and it’s awesome! also good filipino and mexican food. like any other city, it’s got bad areas and good. check it out.
hey! wanna buy our house? we’re selling! (not kidding)
@carl669 Maybe? Do you have a listing for it I can look at?
@carl669 Whoaaaa wait a minute. Kent depends heavily on what part you’re in. Lots of it is horrible. We lived there, just a casual stroll from where Gary Ridgeway used to dump his bodies in the Green River. Cops coming by all the time, homeless people, meth heads shuffling by, some guy breaking into our place at 3 in the morning… South King County is not a nice place.
Now. Up the hill, headed east, as you get towards Covington? Yeah, that part of Kent is nicer.
Kent’s got some of the worst parts of Seattle, and some pretty decent parts. Be careful where you’re looking.
@Rosstafari yeah, we’re not in that part of kent. we’re about 1/4mi up the hill from winco. just hang a left on 96th and go straight and that’s our neighborhood.
@metaphore we actually haven’t listed it yet. in the process of getting it decluttered and ready for listing. i can let you know when it gets listed if you want. probably by early september. we mainly picked the area because we wanted a yard. it’s also very easy access to the highway (167)… less than a minute away.
i totally get the part about not wanting to drive in seattle. i get up there maybe 4 times a year and dread it every time. i hate the traffic and the parking in the city. as a side note, i also had an apartment in ballard for 5 years prior to being in kent. lived a stone’s throw from swedish hospital. it’s an awesome area and i loved living there, but houses were pricey as hell for what you get.
Yeah, that part’s good. @metaphore, buy @carl669’s house. Free shipping with VMP.
What are you looking for when you move out of Seattle? I considered moving to Duvall or Fall City a few years ago. Eventually we decided to stay in the city for right now, mostly because I like walking to things like coffee shops and to see friends.
@metageist Staying in the city is getting too expensive. If we move just a little bit outside the city we can get 3times the space we have now for less money. But we don’t want to go too far since we will still be working in Seattle.
I love being able to walk everywhere and being able to not need a car at all, but the city rent prices are killing me.
@metaphore A lot of my friends have been moving to Lake Forest Park, Shoreline and Bothell, and they seem to like it. Another friend of mine lives in Winslow on Bainbridge Island, and he loves it. Commutes on the ferry to work downtown (walk on only though, driving on the ferry is crazy busy).
I think in short there are lots of nice places within 1 hour of Seattle in all directions, but it kinda depends on what you prioritize beyond cost. For example, Seattle’s commute is just the fucking worst. So I prioritize minimal traffic (well I did until I started working from home permanently, wooo!).
@metageist I really hate driving in Seattle. If possible I want to be somewhere that lets me continue to avoid driving in Seattle. But since there are about a dozen different metro/transits in the Greater Seattle area, and it is possible to take a regular bus from Tacoma all the way to Everett, it seems likely I will be able to continue to not drive in the city.
@metaphore I keep hoping that one day we’ll become one of those grown up cities where we have proper light rail or trains. It takes me about 20 minutes to get from North Seattle to downtown by bus which isn’t too bad, but only if I go during commute times. If I want to go during any other time it becomes about an hour.
I’m in Lakewood, about an hour drive (South) from Seattle. (in non-rush hour times) It’s actually a pretty nice little town if you don’t mind living right by a military base. Real estate is a hell of a lot less expensive down here than in Seattle. Check the realtor sites for zip code 98499.
It depends on what you’re looking for. I really like West Seattle, where we live: great balance of walkable and spacious, always just a few minutes from the beach, and close to downtown. But it’s gotten crazy expensive in the six years since we moved here, to the point where I don’t know that I’d recommend it unless money is no object. I know we couldn’t afford it if we showed up today. The well-known city neighborhoods like Ballard, Wallingford, and Queen Anne offer a similar mix, but again, $$$…
If you’re looking for a very urban experience, in an apartment with action always outside your door, Belltown or Capitol Hill are probably the way to go. Or maybe the U District.
As for the rest of Puget Sound, I don’t get out much… but of what I’ve seen, my favorites are:
Vashon Island. Gorgeous rural living with a bit of a bohemian touch, just a short ferry ride from Seattle.
Kirkland. They’ve done a really nice job of making the downtown feel like a little village and the lakefront is pretty cute.
Snoqualmie and, further out, North Bend have spectacular mountains surrounding neat little town main streets, but they’re right on I-90 and still within transit distance if you’re commuting.
There’s still a lot I have yet to see, though, so don’t take this as comprehensive. Good luck! Fire away if you have more questions, and keep us posted on where you end up.
@metaphore Hmm… maybe you knew the Seattle stuff already. Sorry if I misunderstood!
@JasonToon I am so homesick for West Seattle. I grew up there, and lived there until 14 years ago when I moved to Tacoma to live with my (now) hubby. The housing up there is insane now! I had always hoped we could move back up after stepkid was grown up and moved out, but it ain’t gonna happen.
I envy your location!
@JasonToon Looks like there is about 3 house in west Seattle that are in our price range, it is an area we like a lot, but it looks like it’s just a little too much for us to afford. Currently we are in the U-district, but rent is getting really bad. Getting a bit sick of apartment living after the last 3 years in ~400sq ft. I do really like being in the city but would really like to have a house, and to own instead of rent and that’s just not possible with our budget in the city.
All the areas you listed are places we really liked but just a little over what we can afford at the moment.
The main areas we are looking at right now are:
North a bit, around Everett,
West across the sound, mostly the Bremerton area,
and Anywhere south of SeaTac, preferably near transit lines.
Puget about it.
/giphy pug puppy hat
Do you like small towns? I lived in port townsend for awhile and it was beautiful.
We live over West of Seattle on the Kitsap Peninsula. Seattle is an hr away by taking a ferry or driving around on I-5, though we only go to Seattle maybe 6 times a year.
I like living on acreage and having room for garden, animals, orchards etc… I really like smaller towns.
Bremerton is slowly coming back & has the Navy Shipyard, Silverdale has lots of shopping, malls, restaurants, microbrewery and nice places to find a home. Port Orchard is smaller but a nice little place with a great Mexican restaurant. Gig Harbor is a really nice area with more shopping, great restaurants, theater, brewery, etc. Poulsbo is farther North with nice places.
Good luck finding the best area for you!
@daveinwarsh Bremerton is actually near the top of our list of places we’re looking at. An hour out of downtown by ferry is far more appealing than having to drive an hour from somewhere else. We went over there for the day a few weeks ago and liked what we saw, but really only had a chance to see the downtown area and a bit of the neighborhoods closest to the ferry. We did notice a far amount of new construction going up, which hopefully means values are going up as the area improves.
Listen to this guy. If you can live on the Kitsap Peninsula and it works for your job, man, go for it. Tons of great little towns, more laid back, cost of living is more reasonable, and really not that big of an ordeal to get to Seattle.
There are kind of two faces to living here – there’s living in Seattle (and the metro area), and living in the Pacific Northwest. Both are great. Kitsap feels more Pac NW to me, and my family really likes that. Even if you don’t end up out there, it’s well worth visiting.
Lived here most of my life. Grew up in what is now Shoreline. Family live in Everett, near Snohomish, Lake Stevens, and Federal Way.
For a long time now, I’ve been renting in Interbay. Never been interested in buying, and now I’d never be able to.
But, I’m willing to answer any questions about the area that I can.
I don’t know if I have much to add on what’s been said, but it depends a lot on where you’re at in life, what you want to spend, and how long you want to take getting to work. So to break that down in points…
If you’re single, go for somewhere more urban. Lots of interesting things downtown and in West Seattle, some parts of Tacoma have transitioned from dumpy to pretty cool, and downtown Bellevue is great. If you’ve got small kids, you’ll want to branch out to the suburbs. The Eastside (generally the areas east of Lake Washington) are a good bet. Stay clear of most of South King County (Renton, Kent, Federal Way), except the far eastern reaches and some of the places they’ve been gentrifying.
Seattle is getting really expensive, really fast. It’s always been pricy, but lately, the housing costs have been going up by double digit percentiles every year. If you’re finding the above areas out of reach, looking further south (towards Puyallup) may help. In any case, like most cities, the closer you get towards the downtown areas, the more you’re going to spend. Before kids, we found some nice deals around The Landing in Renton, and it was pretty centrally located.
Unlike cities with an urban core, where people generally go from the suburbs to downtown for work and back out again at the end of the day, people are going all over the place in Seattle. Work hubs and residential areas are all over. So traffic is universally bad, though it tends to get worst along the I-5 and I-405 corridors. Look carefully at Google Maps’ estimated commute times when you’re planning where you live in relation to where you work. You may be commuting more than you’re used to. One upside? The mass transit system here is pretty good, and it keeps getting better. The commuter rail and light rail are great options, and SoundTransit is about as good of a bus system as I’ve been on. Keep in mind that the light rail will be extending out to Redmond (IIRC) in a few years, and some of the towns in the Snoqualmie River valley are great, affordable places that may be a reasonable connection to that, depending on where you work.
Hope this helps a little. Good luck. As long as you don’t end up in one of the bad neighborhoods, it’s hard to go wrong in Seattle. Lots of great places to live.
I lived in Seattle for almost 15 years! I am currently living in Portland because job/rents/Wife was from DC and didnt’ like the Seattle Freeze. So let me say I am jealous of your move. You have a few options. There are a few hidden gems. In the city, White Center is up and coming. I also like Hilman City (close to Columbia City without the Columbia City prices. Outside the city, I would look at Burien and Bothell. Both have a cute downtown and are still somewhat affordable. If you work in downtown Seattle, I would think about Tacoma. I have a ton of friends who moved from Seattle to Tacoma recently because homeownership is still in reach there.
I live on Bainbridge Island for the past three years and love it. The only negative I can think of is that sometimes during winter storms the power can go out for a little bit, PSE is usually very quick to respond to any outages due to windfalls, but other than that it’s great over here on the west side of the Sound. I couldn’t imagine living without acreage or in an HOA planned development but some people are into that… The nicest thing about living on this side is that you can live in the forest and have easy access to the Olympic Peninsula for weekends but are also 30 minutes away via ferry to downtown Seattle. I would also consider Kingston, Indianola, Port Townsend, or Port Ludlow if I were to move off island.
Take a look at North Bend!
Try to find something near the music conservatory run by Guy and Faye Patterson.
/obscure?
I moved to Puyallup just recently from Greenwood in N. Seattle. Just toss out all your notions of the Tacoma area. The Tacoma waterfront is amazing, and I’m legit annoyed at all the King County folks who just flat out insulted and dismissed it. It’s full of great restaurants, nice views, and I love that we can go to the dog park at Wapato or Point Defiance and then take the dog to a myriad of cool breweries/pubs back at the water front.
Everything is an 8 minute drive from my house. Groceries, mall, restaurants, utilities like the T-Mobile store and UPS and stuff. And my house was CHEAP. Like, my mortgage couldn’t pay a decent rent up near the city cheap. It’s big. Do wish it had more of a yard. But it has a garage, and THREE BATHROOMS. Are you kitten me right meow. I have a lawn I need to mow and a driveway and shit. DUDE. And I commute to work on a big train. Which is pretty neat. Plus, I get to see the mountain all the time and i LUH DAT MOUNTAIN.
Con: drivers here are like whattttt is a stop sign??? There’s rampant republicanism. Traffic on Meridian can be hellacious. The commute is fine but it is long. People are older and have these little tiny humans with them a lot. I have an HOA which is very dumb.
But seriously, I’m usually all negative nancy and regret not doing the other thing, no matter what the thing is. But I’m very happy where I’m at.
@meh Are there particular neighborhoods in Tacoma you would recommend? Or ones that should be avoided? We will be commuting up Seattle so being close to the Express bus stops or the train (I’m pretty sure there is a train from Tacoma to Seattle, right?) would be preferable. I haven’t really looked into Tacoma very much, heard all the “Tacoma is terrible” crap and dismissed it. But now we are considering it.
@metaphore Ya, the sounder train goes by Lakewood, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Auburn, Kent, Tukwila to King St in Seattle.
I like Puyallup because it’s affordable but near enough to everything. Within Tacoma itself, if you want the more urban feel the Stadium district is hippest, but it’s spendier there. Not entirely sure about the more suburby parts of Tacoma city limits, but I wouldn’t want to take the train from Lakewood (tooooo long). I think Fircrest and University Place are rather nice areas in Tacoma. Over in Puyallup (the next stop on the train, which is 45 minutes from Puyallup - Seattle) there’s tons of developments and lots of park and rides to get to the train station. For the easiest commute out of Puy, I would spend a wee more and stay within city limits (I’m technically in unicorporated Pierce County just off 128th and Canyon).
All in all, It’s suburban, but it has stuff. You need a car, but don’t need to drive it far. And it’s pretty close to the hip urban stuff that we can go there weekly if we want to. We have bars and breweries, local restaurants, water, parks, a zoo. I’ve never driven to Seattle for anything but work since we moved here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Detention_Center,_SeaTac
So everywhere is awesome! Didn’t really narrow down the areas at all, but more seriously considering the Tacoma area now.
/youtube everything is awesome
Sorry it’s taken so long to respond here, @metaphore, something about the forums has been a little off-putting lately.
I’m in the way South Sound, Olympia/Tumwater area. Seems a real stretch to commute to Seattle from here, though people do. Before I moved here in the early 90s I studied Places Rated Almanac. The area is home to Evergreen College, has clean air, an active arts community, low crime, good schools, the weather is not too different from Seattle (ideal to me except on these rare hot days), and It is fabulously green and beautiful . Most of the area has a fantastic view of The Mountain, it is the gateway to the Olympic Peninsula, and Capitol Forest is right next door.
The annual Procession of the Species is a celebration of art, music, community, and a crazy parade open to everyone with a costume somehow nature-related. I like to go out to Boston Harbor to see the sea anemones, and we have an amazing farmer’s market at the end of Capitol Ave.
It’s ~1.5 hours west to Ocean Shores and the beach or east to Mt Rainier. If you crave a taste of the big city, it’s a bit over an hour to Seattle, and less than two hours to Portland.
Maybe because it’s the capitol there’s less of a redneck vibe here than when you stray off of the I-5 corridor. Also there are tons of state jobs if you are considering a change in employment.
Haha, I promise I wrote this myself though it reads like a chamber of commerce brochure. Good luck in your search for a new community.
A couple of references:
http://www.bestplaces.net/city/washington/olympia
http://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/secure.aspx
Damn. One of those capitols should have been capital.