Hasn’t rained all day where I am. Not even anything close on the radar.
My bad. That was posted with a picture last night @6:39pm (I just saw it this morning.)
Beeeeautiful day today, clear, low 50s and puffy cumulus clouds. This will get the grass growing.
Another thing I forgot to mention is landslides when it rains a lot, something flatlanders rarely think about. Some people I know down south of here are blocked in. Weyerhauser is working on their logging roads to try to get supplies up and around the slide. Closer to us, I-90 was closed by a slide just last month.
whenwilltherainstop #greygreygrey and #shootmenow are very popular tags in my PNW facebook feed right now. Wet winter. But hey it's sunny at the moment!
That seems relatively inexpensive. Some friends and I were scoping out a house that some friends just won the bidding on in Seattle. We were curious how much it was. 1.3M US (lol). We were so impressed how reasonable that was. Two houses down a bigger (by urban not suburban standards) house is on the market for 3.5M.
@cobrat I’d give the same advice re the supervisor.
Re
If kids are on the horizon, then tour the public school options in Seattle and the suburbs before making a decision. Last years NMSF lists is a window into the ‘weirdness’ of the Seattle school system and choices that families make.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/national-merit-scholarship-program-announces-semifinalists/
Note in the Seattle list: Bush, Lakeside, Seattle Prep, Northwest, Univ Prep, Seattle Academy and Holy Names are private schools. The public schools on the list with more than 1 are Ingraham (the IB school) and Garfield (the ‘gifted’ magnet school). Roosevelt has only 1 and Ballard doesn’t appear at all. Those are big North Seattle high schools.
Contrast to the the eastside suburbs (east refers to E of Lake WA) where most of the NMSFs are at public schools: Issaquah, Mercer Island, Skyline, Redmond, Nikla Tesla, Newport, Interlake, and Bellevue High Schools.
This illustrates something odd about Seattlittes choose to send their school compared to what eastsider choose. In Seattle, there is a high fraction of private school enrollment. I don’t know why that is, but these small private schools (elementary, middle school and high school) is a distinctive feature of Seattle. If you go down that route…<ca-ching, ca-ching=“”>.</ca-ching,>
One thing to keep in mind about the Seattle area is how much the climate varies by location. DW and I are on Camano Island, about 45 miles northwest (60 miles by car) of downtown Seattle, but that 45 miles puts us in a different microclimate. Camano averages 25 inches of rainfall compared to 36 for Seattle.
What is going on with the K-12 school system in this country is confusing as heck at least to me and would make for a great separate thread. You know, it used to be simple. You’d send your kids to whatever public school they were zoned for and that was that but nowadays it is yet another cash drain that parents have to make if they decide to send their kids to private or charter schools.
This thread was about where you would live if you were a 1% given four glamorous choices. About 160 posts into it I saw a TV show filmed in Vancouver and for two episodes I was thinking I live in an ugly city in basically an outhouse compared to what people with real money live in. Then they mentioned that the 1600 square foot condo that only cost $1.5M had HOA fees of $550 a month and I laughed out loud. I laughed as much as I laugh when I hear about $66,000 a year for some of these elite schools and about as much as I laugh when someone starts a thread saying some silicon valley kid making $170K a year can barely get by. When I turned off the TV, I’m never moving to Vancouver anyway, I realize my current financial and living situation is more than fine.
I am not going to go into debt up to my ears just to have material things like that. I like where I live. It won’t take your breath away but it ain’t bad. It should hit 70 today and I can’t wait to hit the park with my son’s dog. We’ve had two days of cold weather and I can’t wait to get out and run, work out, and sweat. It really sucks that so many basic things (health care, a place to live, basic education, higher education) cost ridiculous amounts of money in this country. I grew up middle class and I am upper middle class now and happy to be there. I am not a 1%. I’m not sure what percent my net worth is. I’d like to know.
</ca-ching,>
I think the reason is that Seattlelites (including eastsiders) are really focused on education. Much more so than sports, it’s all about the education with our kids. The public school system on the east side is generally quite good, in Seattle, it can be spotty. We sent our kids to Lakeside, as public schools where we lived were okay, but Lakeside was phenomenal. If we’d lived further to the east, we might have at least considered the public school.
Yes, well you do have to consider your school choices even if have a 1M income. The header said Seattle, which I would define as Seattle-proper not Redmond/Bellevue on the eastside. Maybe we can quibble about Mercer Island. I guess no one would really complain if you lived on Mercer Island and said you lived in Seattle. Anyhow you are going to send your kids to school so you have to factor that in.
I guess I’d have our 1%-er on Mercer Island, which as I said maybe is cheating to call ‘Seattle’. I’m not sure where 1%-ers on Mercer Island send their kids to school. Obviously many of the private schools in Seattle have kids from MI, but surely not all make that drive.
But if we have to choose Seattle-proper, then in the Highlands or Carkeek area high up with those incredible views of Puget Sound. Commute to Lakeside and Evergreen is easy; our 1%-er is sending their kids to private school if in Seattle-proper I assume as all the 5%-ers I know have and I assume 1%-ers would too. Even if your chauffeur is doing the drive, I am going to assume that our 1%-er is like most parents and would want to be involved with their kids school. So going to school cross-town (in miserable Seattle traffic which is not getting better in our lifetimes) is not ideal.
What about Capital Hill and Queen Anne? Well the OP implied that our 1%-er is building a new house and CH and QA are historic areas and I think you’d go there to live in a classic (if very remodeled) house. Tearing down and building something modern in those neighborhoods? Grrr, no we don’t send our 1%-er there to do that.
Magnolia? Lovely views, but we assume that our 1%-er is working and who can get in and out of Magnolia? And what are the school options? Same goes for West Seattle, and again maybe we shouldn’t call WS “Seattle”.
What about the Lake WA neighborhoods (Laurelhurst/Windemere)? Good option and certainly our 1%-er would be around like minded peers as this is an area where architects go all out. Wow, some of the houses I’ve gone to there have been amazing. But I think the views cannot compare to Highlands/Carkeek area. Hmm, I think I personally would go to the LA WA neighborhoods to be closer to the city “vibe”. Whenever I head up to Highlands/Carkeek, I feel like I’ve left Seattle.
So that’s my take on where our 1%-er might want to live in Seattle.
If I’m super wealthy, I’m going for the Highlands, maybe Laurelhurst/Windermere. Mercer Island is a possibility, some of the private schools have busses that go directly to the schools from Mercer Island and other areas.
Our HOA monthly dues are $500 (actually assessed yearly). That is for a 24 hour manned guardhouse with electronic gates, maintenance on large mechanical gates, maintenance of large pond with fountains and waterfalls, front lawn service for all homeowners, and maintenance of stand alone exercise facility with many machines/televisions with cable, etc. We weren’t looking for a gated community; the house we liked just happened to be in one. It does cut down on annoyances such as door to door sales/religious house calls, etc., and it probably presents an extra layer of security that the average burglar doesn’t want to deal with. So overall, it’s worth it to us.