Everett, WA
 

My little sister is looking at a house there. Seems real estate is 10X what I'd pay here for something comparable. Tell me about the area.

Some parts of Everrot have higher crime, typical. Just a meh medium sized City.

Have fun getting to airport or Seattle. I5 and 405- forget it.

EDIT: SHe can hang out with Corgi, he lives in the area.

rjp

I gather its an easy drive to the hospital she works at.

Traffic and meth

Just hold it.

Everett is GORGEOUS. My eldest was born there at Providence Hospital.

All west coast real estate is expensive.

As said above, there are a number of smaller communities nearby. Prices drop as you leave the core area. Example. Move to Marysville? Big reduction. Further to Darrington? They practically give it away.

Commute from Darrington would suck. And, it is super red-neck. And schools are terrible.

Have your sis rent and get her bearings first.

She's been renting in the area for four years.

Is she at Providence in Everett?

It's an easy commute from Marysville or Arlington there. I live about 45 minutes north, and work in Ever-rot. I wish I could ditch the commute, but it isn't too bad and I have zero desire to live in Everett proper.

PM me if you have specific questions. I've lived here since 2000.

She might look at Shoreline

Seattle is the cure - for complaining about Vancouver BC traffic.

Concrete is like a little Manhattan.

Pockets of real goodness. But if she works at providence there are a million places that are better with low traffic commutes. Especially heading North or East. Can’t wrong in Mukilteo only a few min away if Providence is where she works.

The Rucker Mansion was just listed for sale so if $3.5m is in the budget its a pretty sweet place! Calling Everett expensive rea estate wise though is an odd statement. Its one if the less expensive places around. Probably 2/3 less than in Seattle.

I scored 5 acres, house, seperate garage and a huge shop in Marysville for less than a small house with no yard or garage and neighbors 10ft either side would have cost in the Greenwood area where my old business was.

Everett is a bit of a dichotomy. There are many beautiful, safe neighborhoods, but there are also some utter schitt holes with unlivable crime rates. One of the problems that some of the nicer neighborhoods face is the relatively small size of Everett proper - it makes it too easy sometimes for the riff raff of the bad neighborhoods to wander into the good ones. Having rented there for four years, I would hope she knows where the "battle lines" are drawn.

Having worked "in" Everett (really just south of it, at a large commercial airplane facility), many of my coworkers lived in Everett proper. The vast majority of them moved out as soon as they were financially able to do so, for the reason mentioned above. There are a lot of surrounding communities that are not a terrible (although not a great) commute into Everett. I would suspect that she is familiar with some of them, and has coworkers living in some of them as well. I would highly recommend she look into some of them.

If you think it rains a lot in Seattle, study up on a weather "Convergence Zone":

The Puget Sound Convergence Zone (PSCZ) is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs over Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. ... This convergence zone generally occurs between north Seattle and Everett and can cause updrafts and convection, which leads to a narrow band of precipitation.

Hah - "Convergence Zone" is code for "The Higgins Household". I swear we live right smack in the middle of it at ground zero.

There have been winter days, for example, when there is 6-8" of snow on the ground at my place, and a mere two miles east of me I-5 is bone dry. And vis versa. Or, in the spring, summer, or fall, we will be hunkered down indoors avoiding a driving rain, and head on down the hill into Edmonds to the waterfront and the sun will be out. Crazy stuff. So, yeah, we just chuckle (and look out the window) whenever the weatherman says "convergence zone"...

Mmmmm two words... Casino Road!

??? You lost me - what about Casino Road?

I was just being goofy, Casino Road has been notorious for as long as I can remember. I went to Cascade High School :)

Take the price difference of a similar house only a few miles away,
-Divide that by her yearly salary,
-Figure out how many years of pure 40-60hr/wk work going straight into the bank. Not vacations.
(Not a countertop or bath remodel. etc)

That is her pure time and labor it would take to pay off only the difference in price.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are won and lost in RE..
Areas and personal lifestyles will change over 30 years.
It should not be an emotional decision.

OTOH: If she is making buku dinero, doing very well with a guaranteed job with path to advancement, needs to reduce commute time for her own sanity, books on tape ain't cutting it for the daily commute, or a more comfy DD for a few thou more won't satisfy that hatred of driving, then being closer to work might be a necessity.

I figured as much. It's been so long since I've been on Casino, though, that I thought maybe it had gentrified or something. I shoulda known better... It used to be (prolly still is) one of the "better" places in Everett to look for certain goods and services... ;)