Best Places to Live in 2010 - Seattle Met MagazinePosted on 04/29/2010
Best Places to Live 2010
By Matthew Halverson
THE BRAND NAMES
Those who don't live there want to, and those who live there never want to leave
QUEEN ANNE
The sales pitch Julie Whitehorn believes there’s a perception among some Seattleites that Queen Anne is a wealthy, elitist community that doesn’t take well to outsiders. “There’s a joke that goes, How do you know if someone lives in Queen Anne? They tell you,” she says. “But it’s much more likely that the people I know won’t tell you that they live there, because they’re concerned that they’ll have an instant bad reputation.” Lost in all of the talk of Queen Anne’s proximity to downtown, stellar views, and high-end homes, she says, is the neighborhood’s intense volunteerism and crazy-high level of community involvement. Whitehorn got involved with developing the Queen Anne Farmers Market in 2007—after helping to save the Metropolitan Market—and since then, she’s been shocked by the amount of support she’s received. “We had some doubters who felt that we couldn’t do this, that it would take too much time and effort,” she says. “But I have people knocking on my door and calling, saying, “How can I help?”
By the numbers The number of homes for sale in Queen Anne jumped to 161 in October 2008, but had dropped to 89 in January 2010 … Average sales price topped $600,000 for all but one month in 2009 … In ’08 and ’09 Queen Anne had, on average, 4 percent fewer houses on the market than Magnolia per month, but it sold 17 percent more homes over that same time period.
What you’ll find Of course, Queen Anne got its rep as a tony enclave from those qualities that Whitehorn tries to downplay. “That’s what you see from the city,” says Windermere associate broker Lisa Strain. “You look up and you see these beautiful homes that have giant view potential.” (And—spoiler alert—you’re going to pay for those views.) But like Capitol Hill, Strain points out, there’s much more diversity than you might expect: “You get multifamily buildings, town houses, and $3 million properties, all within two blocks of one another.” Just ask Whitehorn. “I live in a thousand square feet,” she says. “And so do most of my friends.”
http://www.seattlemet.com/real-estate/articles/best-neighborhoods-0510/2/#queen
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