Moving to Seattle!

Just accepted a position today and will be moving in July!

Any living advice and tips are appreciated. Info about where to live is particularly desired. I will be splitting time between UW and Kirkland and the wife will be at UW SoM.

Welcome to the neighbourhood. You’re a close 2 hour Clipper ride from Victoria. I hope to see you on my turf next summer... Great Canadian Beer Festival will be on September 5-6.

Looks like I need to renew the old passport.

Most of the neighbourhoods around the university are pretty nice, actually.

The highways (I-5 and 99) seem to cut off the neighbourhoods. But there’s good beer and usually good food in all those areas (U District, Fremont, Ballard, Wallingford, etc). The U District itself has a commercial district between the I-5 and 15th. Big Time is there.

The other part of the district is on the east side of campus down the hill. It feels more suburban down there, not as interesting, except Zoka has outstanding coffee.

I assume the floating bridge still sucks for traffic.

Yeah! Glad to hear you’ll be coming out this way. What are your priorities when it comes to a place to live?

Originally posted by beastiefan2k
Just accepted a position today and will be moving in July!

Any living advice and tips are appreciated. Info about where to live is particularly desired. I will be splitting time between UW and Kirkland and the wife will be at UW SoM.

Still need to defend by the end of June... Almost there.

priorities living wise, not too picky. Cost is the most important thing, I hate to pay too much for anything. But it would be nice to be within biking or public transportation of UW. Love neighborhoods, hate suburbs.

Originally posted by beastiefan2k
Still need to defend by the end of June... Almost there.

priorities living wise, not too picky. Cost is the most important thing, I hate to pay too much for anything. But it would be nice to be within biking or public transportation of UW. Love neighborhoods, hate suburbs.

Definitely.

No one ever takes my relocation recommendations but here they are:



Fremont - Great location, and it used to be a little quirky, too, and still kind of is. This is within a decent bike ride (3 miles, roughly) of the UW. Close to Bottleworks, Brouwers, Fremont Brewing Co., Marketime, etc. I recently lived here, and I loved it, as I could drink beer, and smoke pot on my patio in perfect peace. The apartments, and condos are on the "cheaper" side when compared to Bellevue, Downtown, Wallingford, etc.



Wallingford - Super close to Fremont, as they’re adjacent to one another, and I find the neighborhoods to be the same, in a sense, with the one key difference being that prices tend to be a bit higher, dare I say, in Wallingford for some reason. You can enjoy all of the benefits of being in Fremont, and you’re close to the U-District, but not by much depending on where you live.



The two neighborhoods above tend to have a busy feel if you live off of Fremont Ave, which is what I lived off of, or 45th. There is VERY limited housing off of 45th, so don’t expect to find much. Tuckered back off the aforementioned thoroughfares are some decent places - look there.



Downtown - This can be broken up into multiple "neighborhoods", if you live here, e.g., South Lake Union, Belltown, Dowtown, but just know that places here are fucking expensive, and the neighborhoods I mention are very, very close to one another. My wife and I pay, rougly, $2,300 per-month for a 1000 sq. ft. apartment, with two beds, two baths, and a patio. It’s a new building, and we like it. Parking is an additional $150 per-month.



With the above, I had my parking included in Fremont, and my brother and I (living with him before marriage) paid ~$1,200 per-month for a 1,000 sq. ft. apartment, which had two beds and one and a half baths, with a patio. The quality wasn’t as great as the new build, e.g., no hardwood floors, or marble counter-tops, but it definitely wasn’t a bad place. You’d be within 3 miles of Fremont, and getting over to U-District just means getting on 99 and cutting over, or jumping on I-5.



Captiol Hill - Some places are kind of shitty, some are nice. It’s really hit or miss. You can find great deals, but you just have to strike at the right time. Great location relative to the U-District, and sitting uphill from downtown.



If you need more details, and/or you seriously want to talk about where to look, let me know. This is just my opinion, and some may disagree with my assessment. Good luck, and cheers.

Huge congrats! So glad you’ll be here in town.

CheersMate speaks with wisdom.

UW and Kirkland are connected by the 520 floating bridge. It costs $4 each way and sucks from 7 to 10 and again from 3-7. Traffic cameras:
http://www.wsdot.com/traffic/seattle/default.aspx


Go here: http://www.padmapper.com
Look at 5-10 units in your price range near the UW or Kirkland. The UW side of the lake is far more urbane, far more fun. Far more beery, though Kirkland will get two new breweries this year. (one is Flycaster and the other is, I dunno, Yuppie Pig or something).

There’s a line of water between downtown and the UW on the city side, visible on any map. Try to stay within a mile or two of that line for the most enjoyable neighborhoods. Things get slower and staler the farther north you go, and less convenient and more industrial as you go south.

When you have a couple places you like, ask again about pros and cons in those areas, maybe.