http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/07/07/beating-a-dead-horse-gas-prices/
This is the third time the author of this blog has hammered on some article that describes people who _are in fact_ moving from a long commute to a short commute.
Here's the article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008036634_housegas07.html
It's actually a pretty good article about a _working couple_ who lived together in _Kirkland_ but both worked in Seattle, and who decided to buy a townhome in the Roosevelt neighborhood. Again, many of my readers are in/from Seattle and thus familiar with it -- but others are not. Roosevelt, FWIW, is an _awesome_ neighborhood a little bit north of the U-District with good access to freeways, great bus service, mostly single-family homes switching over to multi-family (think Ballard a few years ago), with decent schools, a Whole Paycheck as well as more moderately priced groceries, a smattering of restaurants, etc.
What it is not is on Capitol Hill. I don't know _why_ the author of Seattle Bubble concludes the couple is buying on or around Capitol Hill (which would be prohibitively expensive even taking a huge hit to the lifestyle in terms of # bedrooms/square footage, etc.). The article clearly states Roosevelt, altho I suppose you actually have to skim down to the bottom to discover this.
A very, very superficial check at real estate prices confirmed what I suspected: Kirkland is _more_ expensive than Roosevelt, unless it's a wash. This would be because of historical perceptions of school quality (Seattle Public had a very, very nasty rep there for a while) that, if they were true, aren't any more.
So. A couple of people decide to move closer to their jobs, in a neighborhood with great services, which will probably be slightly cheaper than where they were commuting from. And the idiot who lives in Kenmore thinks that this won't "pencil out". [ETA: It was uncalled, petty, small-minded and mean of me to refer to The Tim from Seattle Bubble in this manner. I apologize. He responded quite handsomely in the first comment below.]
Yeah. I'll go waste my spare time reading the comments at Calculated Risk, instead. If I need Seattle real estate info, I can always read Rain City. I added my corrections in a comment; I'll check back one more time to see if this had _any_ impact on the author. Otherwise, I'm afraid he's just a wack job whose particular hangup is no longer all that unique (since everyone by now seems on board with the idea that real estate in and around Seattle has crested).
