BALLARD
The sales pitch You can thank Fremont for Ballard’s resurgence over the last decade. As the cost of doing business climbed in the former’s commercial district, the latter welcomed all of those displaced mom and pops with open storefronts. The only question is whether the once-sleepy fishing community can manage to keep rents in check and those shops in town. On the other hand, when John and Joan Q. Public move to Ballard, they seem to stay put. “As they move from their first house to their second and third houses,” says Windermere associate broker Liz Talley, “they might only go a couple blocks, because they like the sense of community that they get here.” That’s what happened to Dawn Hemminger and her husband six years ago. After living in their first home for eight years, they traded up for a bigger pad eight blocks away—and were instantly rewarded for their loyalty: As they finished unloading their furniture and trinkets into the new place, one neighbor after another started chatting them up until they had a full-blown block party on their hands. “It was just really neat to live in a neighborhood where all of your neighbors want to get to know you,” she says.
By the numbers More than 350 homes sold in Ballard in 2009, roughly 130 more than Maple Leaf, East Renton, and Columbia City combined … Between April and November of last year, at least 40 percent of homes available each month sold.
What you’ll find It’s Cape Cods and Craftsman homes as far as the eye can see in Ballard, and many of them are more affordable than you’d think. That might be why Talley’s office was one of the busiest Windermere branches in Seattle last year. “We didn’t have as much transition in pricing as other areas did because a lot of the stuff we sold was in the entry-level or move-up range,” she says.
SHORELINE
The sales pitch With towering trees and quiet streets (as long as you’re not right off of Aurora), Shoreline is as close to a suburb as you’re going to find on this side of the lake. But in actuality, it’s a city of 14 well-defined neighborhoods, each with a character all its own. Although the older, more established ’hoods have been rocking powerhouse neighborhood associations for decades, spots like Richmond Highlands and North City are busy building up their once-dormant organizations. The renewed focus on community building is already paying off: Friends of Sunset Park formed after the beloved Sunset Elementary School closed in 2007 to raise money and encourage the city, school district, and parks department to develop a temporary park on the land until a new—as-yet-unplanned—school could be built.
By the numbers Median sales price rose above $335,000 in just February last year, when it jumped to $472,000 … Average price per square foot of homes sold topped $200 last year only in October.
What you’ll find Put simply: You get more for your money in Shoreline, and you don’t have to cross the 520 bridge to do it. Lisa Surowiec and her family moved there six and a half years ago after getting priced out of Broadview. “We needed a house with one more bedroom,” she says, “and it was just more affordable to find a bigger house up here than in some of the nicer neighborhoods in Seattle.” But by moving up to Richmond Highlands, they found a home with that extra bedroom for less than their budget of $400,000—plus they were close to good schools and the urban-forest oasis of Boeing Creek. “So Shoreline it was,” she says.
Updated April 27, 2010. This corrects an error in the photo caption originally printed in the May 2010 issue.
Published: May 2010
I live on a floating home. I consider all of the other floating home residents as part of my neighborhood. They might be on Portage Bay, Westlake, Northlake or Eastlake but we all have the same fantastic place to live. Maybe they should call Lake Union a neighborhood and see how it stacks up.
I’m biased as I’ve lived there about 10 years or so, but Juanita/Kenmore area is absolutely stunning, reasonably priced, SAFE, one of the best school districts in the state and you have 300+ acres of hiking, mountain biking trails right down to Lake Washington and nobody realizes it!!
You can file BARGAINS here! My house even post-bubble is still worth 3x what I paid for it 10 years ago. It’s incredible.
For you commuters, you are going to find a better spot (unless you are rich!) for a family with someone working in Bellevue and the other person working in Seattle.
It only takes me 20 minutes to get to downtown Seattle and my girlfriend only has to drive 20 minutes tops to get to Factoria.
Kirkland is a 5 minute backroad drive. We have 5 parks right on Lake Washington within a 5 minute drive for the farthest park!
We never get any respect with these polls because nobody realizes the scoop about this area.
You can jump on the other areas “holding steady” or you can jump on an area that will appreciate in value big time in the coming years. You decide… :P
P.S. If you are a crappy neighbor, please disregard this comment. It’s terrible here, please go live in Alki or somewhere else! hahahaha!
Hi Seattle Met,
I live in Columbia City and couldn’t help but notice how incredibly incorrect your statistics are for our neighborhood! 1 % non-white? Spend 5 minutes in Columbia City and you can see that stat is wrong! Also 0 percent kids under 12? O percent of our residents have B.A. degrees? Don’t know where you are getting your stats but I do hope the other neighborhoods are more correctly portrayed!
I have lived in Columbia City for 2 years now and could not be happier with our choice…. the downtown is adorable, has lots of restaurants, a bakery, a meat shop, banks, coffee shops, the farmer’s market is great, tons of parks (Seward, Genessee, Lake Wash boulevard near by and the new Jefferson Park going on on top of Beacon), a great dog park, the light rail is awesome for us since we work downtown, and the central location makes it easy to zip north or south on I-5 or hop on I-90 to the eastside…. love this neighborhood…. 5-7 mins to Capitol Hill…. I could go on and on…. thank you for mentioning us.
Edmonds doesn’t make the list? What’s wrong with Bellevue? Oooooh, take that you old money people!
They should have given more affordable neighborhoods some credit. Parts of Burien are pretty good. Des Moines and even SeaTac, too. (McMicken Heights) Lynnwood has some choice places. (Lynndale Park, Meadowdale)
I might choose Snohomish over Woodinville.
I enjoyed both the writeups and charts, but it would be nice to know where some of the statistics come from. Also, the article might be better titled “Best Places to Buy 2010” since it entirely focused on for-sale property. That got a little strange for places like Capitol Hill, where it’s much more common to rent, especially among young families who are just beginning careers.
So a few of you want to know where they got the statistics & demographics?
It’s on the right side of the web page (silly).
http://www.seattlemet.com/real-estate/articles/neighborhoods-by-the-numbers/
Thankfully I read all the comments. This site is misleading.
Thank you for the article. My family of three is looking to relocate from Spain to the Seattle metro area prior to the 2011 – 2012 school year. Are there any residents in need of a multiple month house sitter?
looking to relocate to Seattle area next summer and need guidance on best programming available for my two autistic sons….appreciate any guidance.
Kathleen Brennan- I would love to assist your real estate needs. I am a broker in West Seattle, a resident of North Seattle and a fun of many neighborhoods!! Please feel free to check out my website www.bigsoundhomes.com. Take care!
Weird that Wallingford and Fremont aren’t mentioned since they are such great neighborhoods. But then again, this is entirely focused on housing sales, so that probably explains it.
What areas have some of the best schools for children?