My daughter and her BF are looking at buying a home. He works in the Bellevue area (east of Seattle) and it's not close to being affordable in Bellevue/Redmond/Kirkland. He's a software developer and makes a decent income.

They are looking at houses with a one hour commutes into Bellevue in order to get the price down into the mid $500k but those are laughable considering what that buys with a very long commute. Condo prices aren't much better.

I was standing outside my garage drinking a cup of coffee when a young real estate agent approached me asking if I wanted to sell my house. He handed me a flyer of recent sales in my neighborhood. Of the four listed, three sold for above the asking price. The most recent, sold for $715k but the asking price was $699k. It sold in one day. The new buyers, whose vehicles sport California license plates, were probably able to write a check for the agreed price vs others who were probably trying purchase with a standard mortgage agreement (a guess on my part) and may have been at a disadvantage competing against someone exiting California with a $1M from the sale of their home. Again, a guess on my part. If I'm selling my house and someone can write a check on the spot, for $15k above my asking price, pending inspection etc., I might be inclined to take that deal vs the others.

In any case, in the Seattle metro area, it doesn't appear Real Estate sales have cooled or prices declined with the COVID and layoffs at Boeing etc. Rents are through the roof as well.

It’s insane considering that Seattle and our state is trying to tax every company out of here.

Yeah, I'm a bit east of you and the home prices have been going nowhere but up this year. Lots of people leaving downtown and heading into the suburbs.

I'd imagine there's people vacating the suburbs and getting much, much further away. It's what I want to do asap.

Ditto for Denver.

An hours commute from Bellevue puts you about 18 miles away- That's how long my commute was from Redmond to Renton pre-covid.

A coworker just bought a place for $550K in Kirkland I think. It was a fixer-upper and needed work to be able to move in and it sold immediately.

He said houses were selling in a day and there wasn't even time to get an inspection before having to commit on a sale.

This doesn't help. The additional 10,000 workers are coming from Seattle.

quote:

Amazon on Friday said it will create 10,000 jobs in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, on top of the 15,000 jobs it already planned to create there over the next few years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/0...evue-washington.html

They were looking in Maple Valley/Black Diamond which IMHO would be a crushing commute to Bellevue.

Part of the problem is that folks in their 30's think they will never go back to the office and will spend the all or, the majority of their work day working from home. I'm jaded enough to believe that while that may be true though 2022/2023, there is no way organizations are going to let their expensive office space become Rat farms for the next 25 years. IMHO, they will call most of these folks back into offices once COVID is under control, people are back on airlines, taking vacations and things are almost back to normal (whatever the new normal will be).

Oh, finally something I can talk about.

I lived in Maple Valley for 5 years before deciding to move to the slower and far saner part of Washington.

Maple Valley is most likely the closest you're going to get to Bellevue in that price range and even then that's pretty Iffy. Our house there sold in July for 519K, which was 100K more than I bought it for back in 2015. They might be able to find cheaper in Covington, but prices in that area are skyrocketing. Maple Valley prices are especially skyrocketing because the Tahoma School District is the best in the entire state.

I disagree that Maple Valley is a crushing commute to Bellevue, but it's not easy. I could get from my place just south of Four Corners to downtown Bellevue in 45 minutes if I left at 6:30AM.

If I was them, I'd try to get into a place in the Renton Highlands if possible. It's a little more expensive than Maple Valley, but not overwhelmingly so.

Might want to look on the eastside of Renton. Get a fixer upper and make it what they want.

Brother in law just sold his house in Bothel for $100K over asking in two days.

quote:

They were looking in Maple Valley/Black Diamond which IMHO would be a crushing commute to Bellevue.

That’s where my son bought. It was crazy, running to see a house, putting an offer in and, someone outbid him. One time his realtor wanted him to pay for a home inspection to make his offer look serious. Yea, right. The guy that bought it got the home inspection for free.

One house had mold in the vents, a DIY carport that leaned, a add on room with no heat and no power. He had a serious talk with the realtor about due diligence before showing a house.

Oddly, he found the house on his own, got realtor to show and bought it. (This before his wife came back from a trip.) Nice house, immaculate. A huge advantage was the high school had excellent ratings and was new.

Yes, he works in Bellevue and leaves at some horrid hour. With COVID he works from home but still must go in a couple of days a week.

Ourselves, we’re just in the foothills about 30 miles from Seattle. The light rail is at the bottom of the hill and it’s a fast commute.

However, we avoid Seattle and only rarely go in. When we do, we stick to the tourist areas. The rest of the city is filthy, drug ridden and full of homeless. The last few officers the city has hired are great people from the Seattle force.I know several officers that are burning their vacation/sick time before retiring.

Granted it's been forever and a day since I lived over there, but at what point do you look at living across the sound and using the ferry?

I loved life on the peninsula, couldn't imagine spending on a I5 commute.

Cannot comment on prices as I am definitely not in or from that area but has he checked to see if he could work from home, most developers (at least in my IT world) typically have flexibility to?

This channel on Youtube might help.

https://www.youtube.com/channe...8vWol8eNjTJZSjq2jaLQ