Hello all. I have landed a job in Seattle. I wanted to know your input in finding a place to rent in Seattle. I learned from Reddit that I should avoid Tacoma. However, I’m looking for more tips on how to find a place and how far from Seattle is too far. As a follow-up question, how to find a place not very expensive that is safe and is near a market where groceries are not expensive. What I mean by the latter is that some big name stores are more experience.
Edit to add: Commute. Best commute would be a bus or walk or skates? at or less than 45mins. Still best commute would be bicycle ride at 30-50mins (10ish mph). OK but could be better commute would be 1 to 1.25hrs commute doing the same. OK commute would be 1 or 1.25 hr drive commute. Anything over that 1.5 drive would be bad commute. Good commute would be 30mins drive. Anything near and over 2hr would have to be very cheap on rent, groceries,
Work. East Seattle. Not far from I90
Desired location. East of Seattle. Maybe one hour drive give or take.
Edit2 to clarify location: I think I have enough information from the comments. Thank you so much everyone. As for location not making sense said one user, it’s actually Bellevue. I said Seattle since it’s easy to remember. Some comments already recommended locations that would work for commuting to Belleville. Thanks again everyone for the information given.
Just saw your edit and comments to others and something really doesn’t make sense. “East Seattle near I-90” is basically either Mount Baker or Leschi. Both of those are primarily neighborhoods without much in the way of businesses and mostly comprised of houses rather than apartments. It’s also a rather expensive area, since it’s in central-Seattle and right on the lakefront. I have a hard time believing that there’s a company in that part of town that’s big enough to relocate a candidate. Did you perhaps mean the Eastside instead? That’s a very different thing. The Eastside is everything east of Lake Washington and is outside of the Seattle city limits. The Eastside near I-90 would be south-central Bellevue (Factoria and Eastgate area) and Issaquah. There are large companies and quite a lot of places to live near there. Recommendations for where to rent on the Eastside near I-90 will be very different than recommendations for where to rent in Central (or East) Seattle. The Seattle metro area is split in two by Lake Washington, and while it’s possible to bike across the I-90 floating bridge (I have a coworker who does), it’s probably not going to be done in less than 45 minutes and is probably going to be rather unpleasant for part of the year.
It really would be helpful if you gave us a better idea of where you’ll be commuting to (like, the cross-streets, or the name of the neighborhood, or a nearby landmark, or the name of the company if you’re willing to reveal that info – lots of us in this area have worked for the major tech companies or have friends who have, and know where all their campus buildings are), as well as what your budget is. Budget is really crucial since rent varies a lot based on location. For instance, doing a quick search it looks like average rent in Factoria is about $1800 per month. Average rent in Lake Union (where Amazon is) is almost double that at about $3200 per month. And if you think even $1800/mo is expensive then I’ve got some bad news for you about your desire to not commute by car for longer than 1.5 hours.