In the days before early retirement and world travel we lived in the best apartment in all of Seattle. We were a block from a weekly farmer’s market, a block from a Safeway grocery store, 8 blocks from a public library, 9 blocks from a Trader Joe’s, and 5 blocks from a large city park with walking trails along a stream in old growth forest.
Home was also a block away from a main commercial street and the main neighborhood bus artery. We had our choice of a number of coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, along with easy access to every part of town just one short bus ride away. The owner of the quaint coffee shop just across the street would often give us free coffee and vegan chocolate chip cookies, due to our generous tipping and frequent gifts of home cooking.
The commute into the office was quite nice as well. I could walk downstairs, cross the street, and get on a bus that dropped me off 1 block from the building where I worked. According to the bus schedule, this trip required only 26 minutes, enough time to sit back and relax with a good book. Winnie’s commute was even better. She had to walk only 2 blocks to the University of Washington, where she was taking photography classes
Often I would ride my bicycle to work, to get some exercise and fresh air. It was also a great way to work off the stresses of unrealistic schedules and office politics. Depending on mood and weather, I had a choice of riding 8 miles, partially on city streets, or riding either 21 or 23 miles primarily on dedicated bike trails. Sometimes I would ride to and from work, and other days I might ride one way and then utilize the bike racks on thecity buses in the other direction.
“Wow, that sounds great, no wonder you didn’t need a car. You guys were so lucky! Where we live we could never do what you do.”
Absolutely, we were incredibly lucky. You know, because we have absolutely no choice where we live, kind of like we have no choice where we were born.
Below are all of the details and tools we used to find our great Seattle apartment. Perhaps it will help others become lucky too
Finding Home
Start with Work
In our view, the ideal home is in a neighborhood that provides easy walking access to work, a grocery store, a library, parks, and a major bus artery
A helpful tool for a first order analysis is Walk Score. The tool itself leans too much towards a mainstream big spending consumer, prioritizing easy access to restaurants, coffee shops, shopping, and passive entertainment such as movie theaters, but it provides a Walk Score and Transit Score that tell us how easy it might be to live car free on a scale of 1 to 100. In some areas, it also provides a Bike Score
Using my old office address, we can see how that neighborhood scores:
“This location has a Walk Score of 40 out of 100. This location is a Car-Dependent neighborhood so most errands require a car.”
“This location has good transit which means many nearby public transportation options. There are 14 nearby bus routes. Car sharing is available from RelayRides.”
Clearly living near the office isn’t reasonable, as “Car-Dependent” isn’t a part of the lifestyle we want to design.
Follow Public Transit
Using Google Maps, we can view what public transit options exist for a work commute.
Finding the closest bus stop to the office, Google Maps shows us that there are 7 bus options, along with the websites that provide detailed information on each route.
Following the map of each route individually, we can compare different neighborhoods.
One example is the Sound Transit 542, which connects the Green Lake neighborhood to Redmond and vice versa. Downtown Redmond looks to be a possible option, with a great Walk Score of 94 and a somewhat reasonable Transit Score of 51
A visit to the neighborhood let us get a feel for the place, which was less than positive. A mass collection of franchises, parking lots, strip malls, and large shopping complexes, this concrete jungle lacked the feel of home. Despite a high walk score, this was the middle of suburban SUV driving botoxed soccer mom hell.
Another option on the same bus route is the University District, with an incredible Walk Score of 98, a Transit Score of 69, and a Bike Score of 95!
A similar tour of this neighborhood showed numerous independently owned coffee shops and book stores, a nice blend of old Victorian homes and brick buildings, a Main Street feel to the main thoroughfare, and a lively population of college students and families enjoying themselves on their walk or bike ride through town.
Finding a Home
Deciding that the University District was an area we were interested in living, we began to look for a home. Several potential apartment buildings had for rent signs and phone numbers, so we collected photos of these on our iPhone.
We also perused the neighborhood from the comfort of home using a another great tool, Housing Maps.
Housing Maps provides a visual way to see all housing options offered on CraigsList. In minutes we are able to see everything available for rent or sale in the neighborhood, and see the detailed listings with photos superimposed on top of a map.
Selecting a few properties that looked interesting, we toured them in turn. Meanwhile, we made several visits to the neighborhood at different times of day to make sure we liked the feel during morning, noon, and night. I made the commute to work on the bus one morning just to make sure it was as efficient as it seemed, and we visited on a Saturday and shopped at the weekend farmer’s market. Google Maps was helpful once again, as we used Street View to walk around the neighborhood and
We eventually selected a 900 sq. ft. 1 bedroom apartment with an open floor plan on the top floor of a 1930’s era building, with hardwood floors and great natural lighting for $980 a month. Water, hot water, and garbage were all included, we only had to pay electricity.
The whole shopping experience took about a week, with a few hours spent online and another few hours looking at apartments. It was very little work with a tremendous return. For a little over 2 years, we had the best home in all of Seattle
During your next opportunity to move, perhaps these tools and this example will be helpful. And with a few hours of work, maybe you can be lucky too
“We were a block from a weekly farmer’s market, a block from a Safeway grocery store, 8 blocks from a public library, 9 blocks from a Trader Joe’s, and 5 blocks from a large city park with walking trails along a stream in old growth forest.”
Amazingly similar stats to us (in what was suburban Raleigh NC 40 years ago and is now more or less urban). 2 blocks to a full grocery store and restaurants, 6 blocks to an Asian grocery store, dollar store, and other restaurants, 5 blocks to “a large city park with walking trails along a stream in old growth forest”, 5 blocks to the kids’ elementary school, and 10 blocks from the library and an even larger park.
Bus route to work was a 10 minute walk then a 10 minute ride to my door.
Some people are shocked that I can find a place like this to live in a city like Raleigh. The shocking part to me is why people don’t choose a residence based on factors like walkability and proximity to places they go all the time.
I guess not everybody can be so lucky :)
I see you have a similar broad definition of “luck” as I do.
Makes me want to write a blog post about my “luck-making machine” situated above my neck and below my almost depleted head of hair. ;)
I also have an almost depleted head of hair. Coincidence?
Maybe that’s where the good luck comes from? i’m going to start wearing a wig. Then if I have bad luck all the time, it will scientifically prove that lack of hair is correlated with good luck.
Perhaps it isn’t luck, but that bald people have higher IQs. The data backs this up. I read it on the internet, so I know it is true. You can’t argue with science
Jeremy, I hope you don’t mind me posting a link to my latest article here. This post’s take on luck inspired me to write about my own Luck Making Machine! http://rootofgood.com/luck-making-machine/
A little bit tongue in cheek.
But of course. The cross pollination of ideas from other bloggers is one of my favorite parts of blogging.
It is like salmon returning to the place of their birth to hatch even more great ideas
Ah the post that inspired the luck machine article, finally got round to reading it!
And another follically challenged fellow signing in, so I think you are right about the IQ thing, but then again I would say that wouldn’t I.
I just put my flat into walkscore and it came up with 68, I think that is a bit low as I can walk 10 minutes to a nice and cheap grocery store, 3 minutes to a bus stop, 10 minutes to a mainline train station and the library, 5 minutes to a nature area and playing field and 15 minutes to a huge local park/forest. I don’t really care about eating establishments or coffee shops but there are a few “ok” pubs around as well.
I think people are just lazy nowadays and can’t hack more than 10 minutes of walking?! Or maybe higher scores are harder to get in the UK as everything is generally closer together over here compared to the land of the free and the SUV. :)
I used to work in transportation planning, and there is a concept of the “walk shed” (like a watershed) that is basically defined as any areas within a 5 minute (0.25 mi/0.4 km) walk of a given type of transportation. For example, anything within a 5 minute walk of a bus route would be within the bus route’s “walk shed”.
Not that people wouldn’t walk further than 5 minutes (as they also prepare 10- and 15-minute walkshed maps) but 5 minutes is the typical definition of “walkable” in the transportation planning community. I personally look at anything under 20 minutes as walkable which gets me to just about everything I routinely need (other than the big box discount store and big box hardware store).
I’m not sure how geographically variable this walk shed concept is, since I haven’t done any planning in NYC or SF or other big transit/walk friendly cities. I did a quick google for walk shed and a Seattle planning document was the first link I checked out, and they do use the 5 minute walk shed. And Seattle is one of the more pro-alternative transportation communities in the US.
Interesting stuff as always Justin… Cheers! :)
Looks fantastic, and similar to mine as well. We’re in south Wallingford, just a few blocks away from the Fremont Troll and the Gasworks Park, and the 5, 16, 26, 28 and 40 bus routes get us downtown. :-)
But, I always feel that I’m paying a little (lot) more than I should be – just a hair over $1500/m. But as I look around Padmapper (U district, Wallingford, Fremont, Ballard areas) it feels like the new minimum for 1-bedrooms is close to $1500.
When you got your place, was $900/m average, or below average for the area?
Thanks for the intro to http://www.padmapper.com, it looks like a great tool. It does seem to be limited in what it shows. I know our old building has vacancies but it isn’t listed in the tool. Everything also looks to be priced higher than what is on Craigslist
$980 was about average, maybe even a bit higher than other places we looked at, although prices are higher now by 10% or so. They were also asking more but we negotiated the price down. I even offered to pay a whole year in advance for additional discount, but they declined
Wallingford is a great area. I would happily live there
This is an excellent guide. I went through a similar research exercise a month ago after we sold our house and decided to downsize to a one-bedroom apartment in walk-friendly part of LA. I’ll keep this post bookmarked because I think it’s something that can be applied even after leaving the 9-5 grind.
We went from living in condo with a Walk Score of 43 to an apartment with a Walk Score of 85. The area around our new place is so walkable that we haven’t used our car in weeks. Part of that is because we are two blocks away from a grocery store and within several blocks of other awesome city amenities. We both take buses to our respective jobs.
We are thinking of renting out our car to generate a bit of spending income (think of all the ice cream you could buy with $200/month).
Nice move Spoonman!
You could totally buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra (my favorite) and invest the other $197.
LA has a reputation for being car centric. When I used to live there, my place had a Walkscore of 86 and I almost never drove. So there are at least 2 examples that it can be done
My husband has a question. What if you work at a place that has little to no public transportation? What do you recommend?
I would explore the little public transit available. Even a single bus will work, even if it requires some schedule management. Even if it feels inconvenient at first, it will start to feel normal as the habit is formed
Even better than public transit would be biking.
Worst case, car pooling or even finding a new employer
I love your tips! Just found this website recently. Although I’m curious, with a goal of retiring early, is it not better to invest in a house or condo rather than setting money on fire for rent that gives no return?
Hi Derek, welcome.
The idea that rent has zero return or is like setting money on fire is… let’s see, how can I put this politely… bullshit :)
This post you’ve commented on is a bit older, and I’ve touched on this a bit in two newer posts:
How I Made $102k in Real Estate and Am Poorer For It
Renters for Life
Cheers
Jeremy
hey guys,
I’ve long enjoyed your stories about your journey. In that time I went from living in Asia to moving back home to the USA, where my wife and I have tried to find a place that is reasonable and walkable… and it feels like an impossible task these days with a kid.
Now I cant complain too much. I work from home and we spend maybe $300 a month on transportation costs on average. We have everything we need close by but it’s not the best area outside of our gates but we have necessities largely within 5-10 minutes…
the thing is, we REALLY want to live somewhere walkable. We’re in Southern California and while we’re waiting for my wife to finish school (again) so she can look for more opportunities, any decent walkable area is now ridiculously expensive. We’ve been able to keep transportation costs down and more than half of our transportation costs are insurance due to my wife being a new driver (she’s not young, she just never drove while living overseas…
so I guess the point or question is, how can we gather data about walkable locations that are family friendly while taking into consideration budget constraints? we’d love to live near walking trails but places like that in California are typically much more expensive places to live and the additional costs dont seem to be justified
Did you run through the process in this post? (walkscore, google maps, etc…)?
Winnie has never had a driver’s license (never needed one) so that sounds familiar.
Also look into bicycles. Southern California has dream bicycle weather, and 5 minutes by car is often 2.5 minutes by bike.