Moving to Washington, looking for advice

[Dexman1349]

My wife and I are strongly debating a move up to the Seattle / Tacoma area possibly as early as next spring and are just looking for perspectives from those who live there (or have lived there in the past).

The company I work for has offices in both Seattle and Tacoma (each of their respective Downtown areas), so on that front I would imagine I could live just about anywhere (from Lakewood all the way up to Belleview) in that metro area and be close enough to one office or the other.

What's the market like up there as far as civil land development and/or construction management work?

How do you think the future looks for growth in that area?

How difficult would it be for me to get my PE license transferred there?

Which areas are better on a community level (schools, crime rate, travel accessibility, cost of living, etc.)?

Obviously if you have anything else to contribute, that would be appreciated.

 

[klk]

I went to grad school at UW in Seattle and really liked it. I was born and raised in Portland, and got my BS at Oregon State, so Seattle is the farthest from home I've ever lived. I like Portland better than Seattle, (what can I say, I have family here) but Seattle is a close second. House prices in Seattle are more expensive than Portland, but not sure how it compares to Denver (at least that's where I assume you live based on your location description). I can't really provide much info on the market in Seattle in the terms of work.

I'm going through the process of gathering the info to get comity in washington, and so far the requirements don't seem too difficult or unreasonable. However I haven't technically completed the process so I don't know for sure how difficult it is.

So, no offense to people from Tacoma, but some consider it the armpit of the Puget Sound - it stinks, it looks dirty (from the freeway anyway). I would avoid living or working there if at all possible. However, I imagine house prices are a lot more reasonable than in Seattle, and maybe there are other areas in the suburbs that aren't as bad. I wasn't aware Tacoma had a downtown area . . .

Seattle downtown is pretty cool and mass transit is decent to/from the downtown core - they have a dedicated bus tunnel under downtown and a new light rail will go from the airport to downtown. As you can probably imagine, parking is expensive, so you probably want to look for housing close to a bus line. Traffic can be pretty bad, especially during rush hour. A drive that should take 30 mins takes well over an hour or more. Since you would be working downtown, I would avoid having a commute that requires travel from the "eastside" - meaning east of Lake Washington. Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond are nice communities (Bellevue has some of the best public schools in the country), but it will be a nightmare getting to downtown for work and houses are expensive in Bellevue. But I do know people who dealt with the commute because the only houses they could afford were in Redmond and Kirkland and they just took the bus from a Park-n-Ride to downtown. The 520 bridge is about to fall down and plans for a replacement bridge will likely necessitate a toll. If you can swing living in seattle, I think most neighborhoods are pretty good, but I'm sure there are some that are not as good. I lived in the U-district, so I don't have much knowledge of other areas.

All that said about traffic, I absolutely love the pacific NW and would totally live in Seattle if I couldn't live in Portland. Hope this helps a bit . . .