This post is sponsored by Zumper – an apartment / house rental search tool.
Premise
As COVID continues to ravage the American economy and upend our already-hectic lifestyles, more and more tech workers are seeking to move out of the Bay Area and other tech hubs towards cheaper, easier living elsewhere, such as Salt Lake, Denver, and others. I’ll be focusing on Bellevue, WA, which is a large place in itself (130,000) and comparable to Seattle in price, with plenty to do. In my spare time, I like researching cities that are either places where I want to visit, or close to those that I would visit otherwise (in this case Seattle) just to learn more about the various places in the United States. I also spend an exorbitant amount of time looking at housing, both places to rent, and places to purchase, because real estate is a passion of mine.
Bellevue Attractions
Of the top ten attractions on Tripadvisor, half are parks! The Bellevue Botanical Garden is the biggest hit, 53 acres of gardens & wetlands, with plenty of community activities – concerts, exhibits, celebrations, gatherings, etc. Two museums make the list, one for Art and one for the children – of course, they are either operating at a limited capacity or not at all due to the current COVID & wildfire situation in the northeast. Plenty of water around with Lake Sammamish and Lake Washington for all of the water activities you can enjoy.
Finding the Right Place
As finding the right place to settle down is essential, using an apartment / house searching resource such as Zumper is helpful. For example, for Bellevue, WA, and many other cities across the country, you can immediately see over 100 available apartments, with many of the standard features you expect across apartment listing sites – such as filters based on price, locations, amenities, favorite-ing, messaging, and tour requesting.
However, it also has plenty more information, such as some data and metrics around average apartment rental prices, by size, over the past five years, where you can see trends. I really appreciated that this was on the main city page for Bellevue – yes I had to scroll down a bit, but not having to click through to multiple pages to get more insights on where I would be living is very helpful. For example, in the below you can track the COVID-19 changes since March, showing a major decline in Studio pricing (from nearly $1,900 to about mid $1,500s), as well as detailing month-over-month changes in the three most commonly requested housing – studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom. These median rents update weekly (I assume) and it’s interesting to see, so you can benchmark accordingly. For someone like me, who is moving from a completely different area and is not familiar with the Seattle, Bellevue, or Washington rental prices, this information is very helpful to gauge myself on what I can expect given certain pricing.
Why should you live here? Answered!
I also enjoyed the blurb, also on the main page, of, essentially, “why should you live here”. What are the local attractions? Who employs here? How do you get around? What’s the nature situation? All of these – and more – easily answered, so if you’re simply checking out the neighborhood, you can get up to speed very quickly.
Lastly, Zumper has plenty of additional benefits, such as applying online – submitting rental applications / credit reports digitally through TransUnion, real-time inventory, and alert notifications for those following a particular rental area. You can also further dive into the mini-neighborhoods that make up the larger city, learning more about their activities and attractions as well.
Looking to Buy?
Alternatively, if you’re looking to buy, you can use a mortgage calculator such as this one for an example $300K mortgage. They have some cool charts to see how much you are paying towards principal versus interest, as well as one showing how the balance decreases over time – first slowly, then more rapidly, as your payments target the principal.
Conclusion
The next time I visit Seattle (who knows when that will be) I will be sure to visit Bellevue and check out the cool botanical gardens and other attractions. If I ever rent in the future I’ll be sure to use Zumper as well as it is very easy to use and user friendly! Additionally, Zumper is even linked to other aggregator sites, where listing my available properties for rent I’ve been able to get hits on Zumper from interested parties as well, so it’s useful both as a search and a listing tool.
This post is sponsored by Zumper – an apartment / house rental search tool.
Featured Image is of the 520 Bridge of Bellevue, Washington, from Pixabay. Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links which, should you click through and/or make a purchase, grant me a commission. Also, I only post in the best interest of my readers. Lastly, thank you for supporting my blog and my travels.
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