How Many “Affordable Homes” Are There?

KUOW does the research, and finds roughly 10 affordable homes in Seattle.

Today in “real estate prices are too damn high,” KUOW host Emily Fox looks at affordable Seattle homes and compares them to the options available to her grandparents in the 1950s. (Hat tip to Seattlish, where I first saw this story.)

Can the middle class lifestyle my Seattle grandparents had ever be achievable again?

That house in the thumbnail is the one her grandfather, an assistant math professor, bought in the 1950s. He paid $16,000 for it, and it’s worth “more than $1.5 million” now.

Fox asks Seattle realtor Claudette Meyer what homes a person like her grandfather could afford today.

Assistant math professors at Seattle University today make about $60,000- $70,000 a year. In a kind of best case scenario, my grandpa would be able to afford a house that is about $320,000 in today’s world.

And in today’s world, Meyer said that would only give my grandfather about 10 options for houses on the market in the city today that he could afford.

Ten houses, and they’re in areas like Rainier Beach, which is—as a point of comparison—so far south that it’s past the airport.

[EDIT: I misread the map. Rainier Beach is south of King County International Airport, not SeaTac International Airport.]

A person making a daily commute to Seattle University could expect a 20 to 40-minute drive each way, depending on whether they hit rush hour. Public transport would take an hour, require two buses and a streetcar, and would cost $4.75 each trip. (That’s $237.50 a month, assuming 25 workdays per month. Of course, this hypothetical person might decide to walk a mile out of the way to take the 9 express bus, and only pay $2.50 per trip. Gotta rack up those FitBit steps and/or catch Pokemon Go.)

Methods of Traveling Between Ballard and SeaTac, Ranked

You’re going to want to read the KUOW article just to see a sample of what these ten affordable houses look like. The house pictured looks like a child’s drawing: squat and square, two windows and one door, and some of the lines are crooked. (The realtor notes that this house might need a little “sweat equity.”)

But it’s an affordable home, if that’s what you want.

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