Seattle/Everett/Tacoma, Washington folks.

The family and I are moving up to WA mid to late March. My wife is transferring jobs and going to finish her degree up there. My business partner and I are also opening a location for our shop/company.

We are looking at moving anywhere within a 35 mile or so to Seattle city center. A little further out is ok. Right now we are looking at Everett, Marysville, Lake Stevens, We aren't opposed to Tacoma area either but the drive up to Seattle seems like it would be longer.

Any suggestions on areas to live? Places to avoid? Her job is in home health so she has to drive regardless of where we live and her cases can change by the month. When we move my our daughter will be a little more than 3 months old and we have 2 dogs that need a good sized yard. Right now we are paying $2200 in rent for a 2bed/2bath 1 car garage town house in a nice area. We are trying to stay around $1800 in rent for a house in a nice neighborhood.

We are going to buy some property within a year or two after we figure out exactly where we want to live.

Racing seems pretty local to the Seattle area with the furthest round being at PIR. Not sure there's much more to say about that but any info is welcomed. Should I just stock up on rains now?

Buying a dirty bike as soon as we are settled in, a couple of my buddies up there have a a couple I can borrow and they go out twice a week.

What race/service shops are local to Seattle? I know EDR is Portland based. But a quick Google search doesn't seem like there's much besides stealerships and little mom pop hack shops.

Anything else you guys can think of that would be relevant for us is appreciated. I'm
sure I'll have a ton more questions for y'all but I figured this is a good start.

 

You can race with www.wmrra.com at both Pacific Raceways and The Ridge motorsports park or with www.OMRRA.com in Portland (also joined by wmrra for 1 round mid-summer).

Best people to get to know in Seattle are the folks at www.kfgracing.com (gp suspension, full service shop, motor building, ANYTHING race related) and Nels at 2-wheel dynoworks for your tuning and race bike needs. There's also a newer but well established company called SBK UNDG (superbike underground), very well known guys as well as Dave Alexander who's a top level builder as well.

Others will chime in but in my last 8 years racing there, these are the folks I know and trust.

 

Forget all of that. Buy a Triumph developed by Mr. Sunshine since he is up there. (Just kidding, Barry and the KFG crew are awesome)

And yes, buy rains. Not me, but a friend of mine during an OMRRA round a few years ago

 

I live in North Seattle and commute to Everett. My wife commutes to downtown Seattle. My 18 mile commute is much, much easier than her 12 mile commute, but it's really time of day dependent. Very early or very late, no problems. Rush hour sucks, regardless. I can ask around for real estate folks up here who work with rentals, and I know shop space is fairly affordable and moderately plentiful. Plus opportunities to build-to-suit.

Racing is racing. Some years are dry, some years are wet. Just have money ready to buy the right tires. You can race about 12 events a year, more if you include Nor Cal (AFM). But WMRRA and OMRRA both have about 6 rounds with one combined.

To avoid: Tacoma.

To investigate: Sammammish, Issaquah, North Bend (all east), Woodinville, Monroe (North East); Lynnwood, Mill Creek, Edmonds (north, between Seattle and Everett). Renton, Kent, Auburn, SeaTac (south, between Seattle and Tacoma).

If you want to enjoy the scenery, you can look at Bremerton, Port Orchard, and Bainbridge Island, and take the ferry to Seattle.

 

When you talk about traffic what do you mean? Right now if I leave my house at 8:30-9am it takes me 2-2.5 hours to go 50-60 miles north. Some days it's more. I spend at least 3.5 hours in my truck everyday.

We would like to not have to take a ferry to get anywhere haha. And the more we talk about it being close to Seattle isn't a huge requirement.

Thanks for all the info guys.

 

Lived in the area for about 5 years. We lived in Covington which was a great place and is kind of in between Tacoma and Seattle. It's also really close to SIR

 

12 miles in 45 minutes in the morning, 60 minutes for the return. That's the wife's commute from north to just past downtown Seattle. You might be surprised by how much a ferry saves you from traffic, especially if you walk on and use the bus on either side.

Join the WMRRA forum and ask the question there, probably get a better sampling of the traffic patterns and suggestions where to look.

 

Can you take me with you? I moved from there in 2000 and have been trying to get back ever since.

 

We lived in Tacoma when my dad was stationed at Ft. Lewis from 80 to 84. Loved it!

What's wrong with Tacoma these days?

 

I'm in Arlington, about 45 min north of Seattle.

My suggestion is to look at Seattle and northward. You may find better prices as you go south, but IMO, the farther you get from downtown, going south, the more likely you are to have uninvited guests.

I have a friend who is a King County Sheriff and he tells me all kinds of horrow stories, and most of them are more south of Seattle, than north.

As always.....YMMV

Cheers !!!

 

Thanks for all the info. I'll sign up over there and see what everyone says.

 

Yeah. do you need a room too?

 

I appreciate that. One of my friends up there who lives in Bellevue and is moving up towards Marysville told me the same thing tonight. Looks like we will stay on the north side near Everett and the surrounding towns.

 

My co workers moved up there by Woodinville. I doubt you can get a house for $1,800, rents are skyrocketing all over.I think that about what they're paying for a 850 SF apartment.
Tacoma is 30% cheaper and is nice in town,not so much out of town, as noted above

Traffic is somewhere between awful and terrible. Expect minimum 1 hour commutes, even if you live close to work. Move close to work in any case.

Start checking the available housing now.

 

Are you set in locating your business in Seattle? I lived further north, in Anacortes. Beautiful area. Mt. Vernon is further north, about halfway between Vancouver, BC and Seattle. If you have option for locating your business, that may not be a bad choice if you want to stay away from the Seattle traffic. For your wives drive, it is more mileage and drive time, but after the first hour it doesn't really matter. Plus she could be coming home to a nicer homestead if that is important to you.

As far as the room goes, I'm good with a couch. Which corner should I put my slop bucket in? Also, I do not believe in doors, at all. They just get in the way.

 

Tacoma's kind of a mix of really nice areas and really bad areas, with not much transition between them. Dick Wasco, one of the premier frame-building/straightening guys, lives in a SUPER nice neighborhood in Tacoma... that you get through by driving though about a mile of "wow, lock your doors" and then bam you're at his $2m house overlooking the Sound.

Everett feels to me more homogenous than that; its minimums and maximums seem to be closer together. It feels like more of an industrial, blue-collar city.. not as pretty as Seattle, Tacoma or the east side of the lake, but just because it's not as built up. I haven't been to Marysville and the other Everett feeder towns in a long time but they seem like nice places to live.

pscook's suggestion of one of the islands and a ferry isn't actually as bad as it sounds - the ferry to Bainbridge runs every 40 minutes and takes about the same amount of time, counting load times. It carries about 200 cars each trip and runs from 4am to midnight, so you're unlikely to miss the last one. (And, if you do, most of the islands also have bridge options.)

Other areas you might want to look at are Lynnwood (between Seattle and Everett), Mill Creek (directly east of Lynnwood), Kent (directly south of Lake Washington), Puyallup (directly south of Renton, just north of Puyallup), and Covington (east of Renton and Puyallup). All of these areas should have plenty of options for a 2bd/2ba with garage for $1800/mo.

The racing scene, as pointed out, is quite active.. between WMRRA and OMRRA alone there's usually enough rounds to blow all your money, and there are always people traveling down to AFM events. Travel to WERA West, other than the Miller round, is less common now but you can chuck your stuff in with me and I'll haul ya, lol. Between SBKUNDG and KFG you'll have all of your race needs sorted in the Seattle area. The other main builders around Seattle are Dave Alexander at Fluid Suspension and Dave Lanigan at Speeddealers, although both of them have seemed less and less active lately.. might be getting tired of the game. EDR is a great shop as well, but it's (relatively) far away and it's on the more expensive end of things. All of the builders do great work (and all have equal amounts of "XXX blew up my engine" horror stories to discredit each other with too), the differences I've found to be generally in how much legwork you do vs they do in sourcing parts and prepping bikes.

 

+1 to the north end.
Lived in Marysville...it's a decent town, but I'd stay out of the city limits. I'm currently in Arlington, and it's a pretty nice town. My commute to Bellevue (or Seattle) is 1.5 hours via bus, or by car it's much more variable - anywhere from 45 minutes (no traffic, non-commute hours) to 2 hours (rare, friday evening, pre-holiday traffic).

 

Next year maybe I’ll move the family to Thailand and we’ll just become elephant trainers.

Job I’m Alameda turned out to be a total bust. They didn’t have the budget to create my position.

Accepted a job this past week. Moving in ~5 weeks. Working in the North Bend area. Finding houses from 1200 miles away is rough and I don’t want to buy anything sight unseen. Looking in North bend, Snoqualmie, Sammamish, Issaquah, Maple Valley, etc areas.

We’re staying up here. I’ve been trying to move up to Washington for years. As noted by the original post 4 years ago.

 

You, staying in one place/job? That's not a bet I would make.

 

If I don’t stay at least in the state, I promise you I’ll show up in the divorce thread.