Spouse and I prefer suburban life but it has gone progressively worse in Bothell/Lynwood/Milcreek due to commute times - it takes anywhere between 45minutes (leaving at 645am) to 1.5 hours (830am) to an hour 930am. Inversely our TCs have been going up and collectively we will be taking home ($1mil+) / year in total for 2018&19. We have been looking at houses in Mercer Island / Bellevue - it would cost $2mil to have similar sized house! I wouldn’t want to fight multiple bids at $900-1.3mil range - hence plan to target something at $1.6mil+ only. For the folks living in Bellevue/ Mercer Island - is your commute worth the premium? Coming from a financially conservative/ poor background - I am quite concerned about dumping so much money on a house but want to commute less and spend more time with kids! Are places like Mercer Island relatively less prone to bubble bursting?
Why not west or south Seattle? good mix of city/suburban elements
Schools, cleanliness & safety - don’t like the corrupt socialist Seattle politics & city becoming unsafe in many good residential areas due to drugs and homeless folks on streets.
Homeless people aren't unsafe, as a general rule
Metcer island is all about Jews and old money. Bellevue is about Asians and “new money”, but it has a great downtown core unlike Mercer island. Commuting is significantly better than Bothell, to both bellevue and seattle.
We did all we could to get a house in Houghton, which is north Bellevue and south Kirkland (literally 2 minutes from south Kirkland park and ride). I work in south lake union and literally my commute door to door is 12 minutes if it's not rush hours, or 25 minutes if it's rush hours. Houghton is very clean, safe, residential and the schools are good. It's in the middle of 4 major downtowns (6 minutes to Bellevue and Redmond, 3 minutes to Kirkland and 15 minutes to Seattle). You can find remodeled houses for 1.6M, but new ones are all above 2.5M.
I would recommend somerset area in Bellevue. Almost the best schools in WA and very clean/safe. You can look up the school part and you will know I ain't lying. Top 3 school district in the state Close to I-90, it takes 20 minutes to commute to downtown Seattle around space needle area, very fast commute to Bellevue dowtown too. Usually a good school zone house will be less prone to recession for example...
Health & Wellness
22h
844
Misdiagnosed As a Child
Personal Finance
21h
773
Here are three stats about how your money is increasingly useless after the most recent inflation report
Tech Industry
3h
256
How many times have you gotten laid off before?
Tech Industry
11h
2221
Job market is brutal for SWEs 🥲
World Conflicts
Yesterday
212
The most moral IDF
If you make 1 mil+ per year, you have nothing to worry about