THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. WHEN YOU CLICK ON THESE LINKS WE RECEIVE COMPENSATION, AT NO EXPENSE TO YOU, THAT HELPS THIS BLOG RUN. ALL OPINIONS ARE OUR OWN.

We are 2 years out from moving across the country with our 2 young kids to a new city where we knew almost no one. We had a couple extra challenges than a couple in their early 20s moving away from their family to a new city with better opportunities. We were 30 years old, we already had a home in St. Louis that we’d need to sell, a whole home full of furniture and items to move across the country, 2 young kids that we’d need to find a good school district for, a new job to start after working at the same company for 9 years, and a new home to find. Along with wanting to find friends, learning about the new city we are moving to, re-adjusting our budget to a higher cost of living city, and so much more. We were leaving our kids’ grandparents and the only state all four of us have ever lived in. This article will cover our experience navigating all the details of moving from the Midwest to the West Coast.

Why Move?

Reason 1: experience a new place

My husband and I were high school sweethearts who never went to the same school. We met through mutual friends as teenagers and dated through our high school, college, grad school years before getting married. He is 2 years older than me and went to a great college for his major within a few hours drive of where I was finishing high school. I also went to a college within the same state - partially to stay near him and partially because I was able to get a full ride scholarship. When we were done with college, within the same year as I graduated early and he late. We went back to our hometown as that is where I got into grad school and where he was able to find a job. We lived in the same state - at most 3 hours from our home for our whole lives. That was never what I had imagined for my life. I have had the travel, explore new places bug since I was little. Life circumstances kept me in Missouri, unfortunately. Fast forward a few years, I had both of my kids and they were both young enough where they hadn’t started school yet or made lasting friendships. This was the time. If I was going to completely upend their lives, I would rather do it now. No judgment at all, though, for whenever anyone moves. I needed a bit of a kick to go and do it right then and that was my reasoning to convince myself.

Whidbey Island’s Deception Pass in Washington

I felt a strong pull to experience something new. To live in a new place. To not visit the same 5 parks with my kids. To live in a city with more nature, better direct flights to international destinations, better day trip options, and better weather to explore everything it has to offer. Just something new.

Reason 2: Better Job opportunities

My husband’s job is in tech as a software engineer. The best job opportunities for him are on the West Coast. Especially for the specific area of tech that interests him. Saint Louis had only a few companies that really fit well for his career. Seattle has far more. He was not moving for any particular job but for improving his career in general.

Reason 3: Politics & Inclusivity

Seattle and the people within Seattle, align more with our values and morals. We value a community that celebrates diversity and supports one another. State politics were a large motivating factor for us to leave Missouri. Especially as a family with 2 daughters, we knew that we did not want to raise our kids any longer in a state that is working on taking away their rights. It is really evident now having lived in both cities, how different it feels knowing that by and large the majority of people around us have the same morals and politics.

Reason 4: Access to Nature & the beaches

Seattle, I feel like, is unmatched when it comes to access and the diversity of its nature. Within a short drive of anywhere you live in the Seattle area - you can get to the ocean, lakes, and mountains. You can visit dozens of different islands as day trips. There are 3 amazing national parks within short drives. As a fair-skinned red head who burns easily, Florida or Caribbean beaches are not as appealing as an often moody Pacific Northwest beach. Our beaches along the Puget Sound (and on the coast/Olympic peninsula) can have soft sand or rocks or large logs to play on or amazing tide pools or beautiful mountain views or trains running alongside them. There is so much variety. You can sit on the beach, without worrying about getting burned in the first 5 minutes, at a comfortable temperature and relax. You can go kayaking or paddle boarding within a 15 minute drive of where you live. You can boat around Lake Washington on your friend’s boat. The childhood that the Pacific Northwest offers, I believe is far and away better than what we could offer our kids in the Midwest.

Reason 5: The Weather

One of the most famous things about Seattle, is probably its weather. And not famous in a positive light. Seattle is known for its rain. But this is actually fairly inaccurate, Seattle doesn’t get the most rain in the US - many other cities you wouldn’t expect get far more than Seattle. Even St. Louis where we were coming from gets more rain. What Seattle does get more of is overcast days and “rainy” days. However Seattle’s rain is more of a drizzle. Seattle’s winters are mostly made up of day after day of cloudy with a light drizzle. While I do enjoy the occasional moody day, my preference is sun.

Seattle weather gets a bad rap and even with more overcast days, I much prefer the weather in Seattle than elsewhere for several reasons:

The summers are unmatched. Seattle gets almost no rain from mid June to mid September. Beautiful blue skies. The weather is mild, 90 degree F or higher days are rare. It is often in the 70s and low 80s. You can get outside almost everyday in the summer and have perfect weather. Since the weather doesn’t get hot enough, there is also almost no mosquitoes.
Winters are mild. We might get light rain almost every day in the winter - but we rarely get snow. It also rarely gets below freezing. You can still comfortably get outside in the winter and enjoy 50 degree weather and just put on a rain coat. Or go in the forest and enjoy a dry hike under the large evergreen trees.
The weather is pretty consistent. Coming from the Midwest where temperatures can shift 50+ degrees within a week, Seattle’s temperatures are fairly reliable. Seattle occasionally sees shifts of 10 degrees across a week but usually you know what to expect each day. It is easier to get dressed in the morning and easier to plan out activities coming up.
Wet weather means green. The dead trees and gray on the ground in Saint Louis was a bigger cause for seasonal depression for me than gray skies but the green nature of Seattle. Seattle has beautiful large evergreen trees, grass throughout the city is green through winter. In the spring, there are so many gorgeous blooms. There are cherry blossom trees throughout the city. Huge blooming rhododendrons. Tulips and daffodils. All the rain really helps the plants grow.

Finding A job

The sections of this article will roughly follow in the order we did them during the process of our move. We first decided that we wanted to move. After a bit of discussion, we pretty quickly decided that we wanted to move to Seattle. We took a trip in the summer of 2022 to Seattle to see it in person to see if we felt like it was a good fit and decided it was. Shortly after that my husband started looking for a new job in Seattle. We didn’t end up moving until January 2024. It took a year and a half from when we made the decision to move to actually moving. So what was the hold up? The job hunt.

The job market everywhere is difficult. The job market as a software engineer in Seattle is also very difficult. Despite there being lots of jobs in the tech industry in Seattle, there are also a lot of individuals wanting to fill those jobs. There are frequent layoffs which lead to large groups of people with a similar background going after the same jobs. The interview process for each job in tech often involves 3 separate rounds. The effort it takes to look for a job is significant. It takes a significant amount of hours: to make your resume, change that resume depending on what job you are applying to, look for possible positions, apply to them, email with the recruiter, and actually have the interviews. It also takes a significant mental strain to constantly get your hopes up and get rejected.

I work on this blog part time along with being a stay at home mom, so my job is obviously quite flexible and can be done anywhere.

We decided to focus on finding a job before moving - even though it can be more difficult to find a job when you don’t physically live in the city you are applying to. It is likely that his application was looked over for someone who is currently working in Seattle. However, we held a large value in the possible relocation package that a large tech company could provide with their job offer. Seattle is also a high cost of living city and St. Louis is significantly lower. He was still working at his previous job in St. Louis and we were still living in our lower mortgage rate home. We valued saving money over the speed of finding a new job. We were fortunate to be flexible with our timing. Ideally, we wanted to move spring/early summer of 2023. This would have allowed us to get our oldest daughter into preschool in September of 2023 when she was 3 years old. We mis-estimated how long this process would take. He did not start applying for jobs in earnest until early 2023, hoping that would align with our ideal timeline. It didn’t. We made the decision to hold off on a year of preschool and keep applying for jobs in Seattle. We did not want to have to start her in preschool in St. Louis, leave half way through the school year and then start a new one in Seattle. More on our school journey in a later section.

After probably a hundred applications and dozens of interviews, he finally got a great job offer from Microsoft in November of 2023. They were able to offer him a start date of late December 2023 - but we asked to push that back till the start of the next year. Both to give us more time to move and to have one last holiday in St. Louis with our families.

While we definitely don’t have any tips for finding a job in a different city fast - the one advice I would give is patience. He found a job that was well suited his background on a great team and we got a relocation package beyond what we could have imagined.

RElocation Package

If you are moving across the country - I would highly recommend trying to get a relocation package with a large employer. Especially if you are moving a home’s worth of goods and have a family. I am going to detail what was included in our relocation package so you can get an idea what to expect. These packages vary greatly from company to company even position to position. While we likely would have chosen a cheaper way to move our items (a mix of DIY and selling a lot of things), we budgeted $15,000 for all of the moving expenses (including a part-time rental and closing costs on our home) in case we had to pay them. Microsoft through the relocation package ended up spending considerably more.

Here is everything that was included:

One-way economy flights from St. Louis to Seattle for our whole family (4 people)
Meetings with a relocation specialist that talked us through everything and answered our questions
Movers that packed up all of our items, stored them and delivered them to our home in Seattle on the day we requested.
- We tipped them ourselves (but that was covered from the relocation cash allowance listed below)
- We had to pay for storage of our belongings if we had to store them for more than a month (we did by just a few weeks, we were able to make a deal with the movers to get the cost cheaper than what was being billed to Microsoft)
Up to 5 days in a hotel in St. Louis after the movers have taken your belongings and before your flight
$50 per day per person (so $200/day for us) for all of the days you are in the hotel pre-departure and for your travel day to cover meals
60 day in a furnished 2-bedroom apartment in Seattle (aka Redmond) while we look for permanent housing
Auto shipment of our car (up to 2)
A rental car in St. Louis to cover the days between our car being taken and when we fly out (up to 5 days)
A rental car in Seattle to cover the days between us arriving in Seattle and our car arriving to us (up to 15 days)
Relocation Cash Allowance of $5000
- To cover any expenses that were not already paid for in the rest of the package. We did not need to show any receipts, we were just given $5000 through payroll in the second paycheck.
Return trip cash allowance of $1000
- To cover a return trip back to St. Louis to finalize any personal affairs related to the move. We did not need to provide proof that we used these funds in that way. The $1000 was just deposited with the above $5000.
A real estate agent in St. Louis to sell our home (we had 2 options to pick from)
A real estate agent in Seattle to buy a home (we had only 1 option)
Home Sale Closing Costs
- Included real estate fees, title fees, attorney fees, tax registration fees, inspections, etc.
Home Purchase Closing Costs (when using the 2 different designated mortgage suppliers)
Tax Gross Up
- They covered the tax amounts for all of the expenses listed below so we had no additional tax liability for this extra “income”

Based on documents from Microsoft, they ended up spending over $85,000 to relocate us.

Selling our home

Preparing to Sell

What did we do in the 1.5 years between deciding to move and getting the job offer? Prepared our home to move. Since we were hoping on a relocation package, which we knew comes with a quick timeline, we did everything we could to make moving easier and to get more money from our home beforehand.

Here is what we did:

Decluttered our home. And again and again and again. We did multiple rounds of decluttering. We participated in our neighborhood’s community yard sale. We sold things on Facebook Marketplace. We donated the things we couldn’t sell. We went through everything. We went room by room multiple times over those 1.5 years. Each time we would get maybe 20 things to list on Facebook and a few bags to go to Goodwill. Selling things gave us extra money to put towards potential moving costs or the cost to buy our new home. We probably decluttered about 20% of our belongings. Our criteria switched between if we haven’t used it in a year then it goes to if we lost this item would we repurchase it. Decluttering our home makes it easier to stage and look presentable when selling. Also, if we had to pay for moving our goods ourselves, it would have saved us money and effort.
Make an inventory of our items. We did this while decluttering room to room. It is often recommended you have an inventory of the items in your home anytime - in case of a fire or something happening to your home. We did not have one. So we started one so we knew everything we had prior to moving. Our movers did make an inventory but it was far less detailed than the one we made. We fortunately only had one item lost in the process of moving, which was far better than we expected. I have heard stories of whole boxes of items going missing or being damaged.
Small home repairs. Many larger home renovation projects do not increase your home value as much as you spend, unless it is something vital that home buyers are looking for like a second bathroom. We stuck with just doing small low-cost home repairs that would make a large visual difference. Repainting trim, repairing trim around exterior windows, painting yellowing ceilings, fixing broken tiles, and refreshing the landscaping around our home.

The Process of selling our home

About a week after signing the job offer, we got emails from two different real estate agents to sell our home. After looking at both of their recently sold homes, we picked one that had sold similar homes to ours in our part of the city. We planned a time to meet with her and decided to work with her. She had experience working with clients who were moving with a relocation package and on a short deadline. Despite not having a choice in our real estate agent, we were very happy with her. She looked around our home and said it already looked ready to sell. We asked if we needed to refinish our floors, as that was a big project we thought would make a positive difference but were not confident, and she said no. We talked through what we thought the home should sell for and we both agreed on a number. Within a week, a photographer came to take pictures of our home. Our home was listed a day or two later. We had an open house scheduled and multiple tours requested quite quickly and ended up getting multiple offers within that week. We ended up selling our home for over asking. We ended up pocketing over $175,000 from the home sale - both due to appreciation and the equity we put into the home. We added this money to the savings we already had for the down payment of our Seattle home and moving expenses.

The closing date was set for a month later, which corresponded to about 10 days after we left St. Louis. The real estate agent said that it would be no problem doing all of the closing process online. The whole process was far more smoothly than I imagined.

Our biggest worry with moving was dealing with the issue of selling and moving out of one house and buying and moving into another. Thankfully, the process ended up being quite smooth for us (thanks to the relocation package).

Hiring Movers

We were not given an option in movers, we were just called one day by the person in charge of our move to schedule a walkthrough of the house. He ended up walking through our house and decided we had less things than a standard 2,000 sq ft home (in the process of moving, he later changed that to a standard amount). We then scheduled the day that we wanted our stuff packed up and taken.

The move took 2 days. Prior to the movers coming, we packed up all of the suitcases that we would take with us to Seattle. All of the stuff the movers were taking would be kept in storage until we bought a new home. We knew we would not see all of those items for at least 1-2 months. So we needed to pack what we would need in the in-between time for us and 2 kids. While our needs are quite minimal, I packed an entire suitcase just for the kids toys and activities and essentials (sound machines, bath items, etc). In total we ended up having 6 suitcases (4 checked bags and 2 carry on suitcases) and 2 backpacks. This had all of the clothes and items we would need for 2 months. The packing of these suitcases alone took about a week. We decided the perfect number of outfits for everyone was 10 outfits each. We had in-unit laundry so could have gotten by with less, but that felt right to allow for variety and to account for some variation in temperatures. There was a suitcase of toiletries, medicines including ibuprofen, bandaids and nail clippers, hair supplies, etc. Before packing, we made a list of everything we would use in a 2 week span to decide what to pack. The morning that the movers came, we put all of our suitcases into our rental car - since our car had already been picked up before then. We could not check into our hotel yet and did not want to risk them accidentally being packed by the movers.

On the first day of the movers, they neatly - and with a LOT of packing materials - packed up all of our items. Each cheap plate that we’ve had since college, was carefully packed. They packed everything with far more care than we would have. There was a special mover that was there that was in charge of taking apart the crib and the TV. They needed someone from our household to be there the entire time the movers were there to approve each inventory sheet. My husband was with them while I took the kids to their grandparents and a play center. I am sure it would have been both emotional and boring to watch people pack up all of their belongings.

Since they took apart our beds and packed up all of our items, we needed a hotel after that first night of the moving process. My husband needed to leave the hotel early the next morning to meet the movers to start loading up all of the items into the moving truck. Rather than bringing the whole big moving truck (which would end up fitting multiple homes) to our residential street with minimal parking, they rented a U-haul and packed up it. It ended up taking 2 trips with the U-haul to pack up all of our belongings. Fortunately, they finished within about 4-5 hours. We then borrowed vacuums and cleaning items from our parents and cleaned the house. We were told where to leave our sets of keys and we officially said bye to our home. The home we brought our two babies from the hospital home to. The home we bought together before we got married.

Our flight to Seattle was the next day in the afternoon. We had a tradition to take a photo of our family in front of our house on the first snow of the year. And by some chance, it snowed that night before we flew to Seattle. So before our flight - we ended up driving back to our house to take that one last final picture.

STORAGE OF OUR ITEMS

Our relocation package included 30 days of storage of our goods in a warehouse in a third location. The warehouse where our goods were happened to be in Ohio. The 30 days started once the goods got there which was less than a week later. We knew that it was likely not possible for us to find a home, buy it and be ready to move into it within 30 days as escrow typically takes that long. We were expecting to have to pay for extending the storage of our items and budgeted out enough to cover another 30 days. We initially were quoted around $100 a week, but were able to get that discounted a bit. We ended up needing an extra 2 weeks of storage.

Delivery of our items

Once we got a closing date for our new home sale, we called the movers and set up the day and time we wanted them to deliver our goods. They needed a couple weeks heads-up to schedule the delivery. We chose the day after our house sold. We got a call the night before with a better estimate of exactly what time they would be arriving at our new house. On the day of the move, my husband was there to oversee it while the kids and I stayed back at the apartment - cleaning it up and getting ready to leave it. When the boxes were packed up, the room they were in was written on the box. The movers that were delivering our items put the boxes into each of the rooms where they belonged. Before they started, my husband walked around and showed them where each room was. We were under the impression that the movers unpacked the boxes and put things away - but that was not the case. Which was totally fine and how I preferred it. There were a lot of differences with our new home and we were going to be setting it up differently. We were also going to do some renovations before moving in so it was easier to have the things in boxes than out.

The whole delivery took a few hours and just like with packing up our items, lots of care was taken for our items.

We were left with all of the boxes and packing materials. We did not realize until after we dealt with it ourselves, that our relocation package included having someone come collect all of the boxes. We ended up just taking them to the dump over many many trips.

Short-term rental

Microsoft provided a short-term rental for us within walking distance of Microsoft's campus. We did not find out exactly where we would be staying until a couple days beforehand. For a Type-A planner like myself, this provided a bit of anxiety but like the rest of the details in the move - it ended up working out great. For our family of four, we were given a 2 bedroom apartment. The apartment was completely furnished with basic furnishings: a couch, a chair, beds. In the kitchen, we've had Airbbs far more stocked with necessary cooking items. There was 1 pot, 1 pan, utensils, 1 mixing bowl, 1 mixing spoon, etc. We had to buy a set of measuring cups and spoons, a spatula and a couple other kitchen items. There were no spices other than salt and pepper, so we had to buy some of those too.

Despite bringing a whole suitcase full of toys, stuffed animals and home comforts for the kids - we ended up going to Target far more frequently than we normally do to buy a toy for each kid. They could have gotten by with what we had, but the mom guilt got the best of me knowing all that they were doing without and that they never asked for the move. I mainly bought "experience"-based toys - craft supplies, science kits, play dough, etc. They also ended up with a couple extra stuffed animals. While we were staying in the rental, we started thinking about their bedrooms in our new house. They shared a room in our old house and we were expecting them to have their own room in our new home. After they picked out the theme or design for the room, we ended up ordering or buying some things for it while we were still in the short-term rental. The plain boring bed sheets that we were provided shortly turned into dinosaur and rainbow comforters. The apartment felt quite sterile but we hung up their artwork and did small changes to make it feel more like home for the month and a half that we stayed there.

Everyone's moving situation is so different, but we enjoyed going to a short-term rental for some time and house hunting after moving to the new city rather than immediately going to our new permanent residence. Especially on the timeline we had, it would have been too stressful to find a home beforehand. We also changed what location we were looking in half way through the house hunt.

The apartment complex that Microsoft put us up in had pretty good amenities - aside from the obvious plus of being in walking distance of Microsoft. We only had one car, so my husband would walk to work each day and I would have the car to be able to do some house hunting without him or exploring the area or just getting out of the small apartment with the kids. The complex had a small gym we could use, a rooftop patio and a courtyard with grills, a mailroom, a bus stop right outside the building, and in-unit laundry. Microsoft also paid for bi-weekly house cleaners.

Finding Good Schools

Our first step in the home buying process was researching the best school districts in the greater Seattle area. While it still was another year and half before our oldest kid would enter Kindergarten, we knew this was a long-term move and that was our highest priority. We both grew up in St. Louis which has vastly different public school quality depending on the area of the city you live in. We both went to some of the better public schools in the city and enjoyed our time. We are big advocates for public school and wanted to find the best option for our kids. One big positive we found out in the process of researching schools was the way funds are distributed by the state for public schools. A large potion of funding comes from the state rather than local property taxes. Schools in Missouri were largely reliant on local property taxes. That meant if you were in a more affluent area, the schools got significantly more money. There were quite large funding disparities between wealthy and poorer districts. Washington standardizes resources across the district based on assumed operational costs for the school sizes and grades. Even in poorer neighborhoods, the Washington schools are still well-funded and usually far better than the schools in Missouri, especially if you are comparing it with similar income levels.

Up at the top of the Space Needle on our first week after moving to Seattle

Looking around at most of the school districts around the Seattle area, we would have been happy with almost all of them. There are some that are ranked higher - likely due to decisions made by the administration and not as much due to the funding they get - but there is probably some funding differences that play in but just not as much as it was in Missouri. We decided to focus on finding a home within the top 10 districts in the area which were, at the time we were looking, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Northshore, Lake Washington, Issaquah, Bainbridge Island, University Place, Tahoma, Shoreline and the Seattle Public Schools. The largest district of those being the Seattle Public school which does have some variability within the district. There are also different choice schools in the district that adds a layer of complexity. In all of those districts, rankings do vary by individual schools as well. The rankings also varied significantly depending on what website you were looking at or what metrics they were focusing on. Some schools ranked very well with test scores and parent feedback but got a low score due to lack of diversity. Each individual parent has different criteria of their own for what they think makes a great school. Parent feedback can be quite important, especially if you are a parent of a neurodivergent kid. Schools might be great at handling kids if they are neurotypical but might fall short at accommodating individuals who are not. For individual schools we knew we were not going to find 10s across the board for elementary, middle and high schools but we were looking for a good average in one of those top 10 school districts.

Preschool

What was more “pressing” was finding a good preschool. This was our first experience looking for childcare of any type for our children. I have heard stories about how hard it is to get a spot at some schools, so this caused a bit of anxiety for me. I started looking at preschools during those early stages of thinking about moving before we even got a job offer. In my research I found something called Co-op preschools. These do not exist in St. Louis, at least not in the way they do in Seattle. In St. Louis, it was hard enough to find schools that were half-time. Seattle’s Co-op preschools offer a more affordable way to do preschool with one of the parents or another caregiver working in the classroom as an assistant one day a week. This was very appealing to us, because I was primarily a stay at home parent and we were going to live in a high-cost of living city. It was a great way to reduce our expenses and be in a community. At first in my research, I was focusing on co-ops in the Eastside because that is where I expected to move to but I later found out there are co-op systems everywhere in the Seattle area. They are typically associated with a local community college and the parent(s) take a child development course and get college credit along with their student being in the preschool. Once we picked out our house, I very quickly researched co-op preschools nearby and got a tour. I did not actually have to worry about availability - we were able to get a spot in our co-op preschool no problem. I was able to find one close to us that had a class for my two kids (17 months apart) to be in at the same time so I did not have to worry about competing times and who was going to watch the other while I was working in the classroom. We really loved co-op - more on our experience with it in the finding friends section.

Buying a new home

After flying into Seattle, we arrived at our short term rental in Seattle (Redmond) at 10pm on Saturday and we were touring houses at 9am Sunday morning. Our Seattle-based real estate agent emailed us in November introducing herself, shortly after accepting the job. We let her know then roughly what we were looking for and she asked if we were going to be flying out to look at homes prior to moving or going to look at homes after we've moved. We decided that since we have 60 days in the short term rental and we need the funds from our current home to buy a new one - we would just wait to house hunt until we had arrived in Seattle. She said that was a great idea and gave us access to their company's home search tool that would let us let her know which homes we are interested in touring. We were using this frequently before actually arriving in Seattle.

She touched back again about a week prior to us moving and we scheduled 3 house tours the day after we arrived - so my husband can tour the homes too before needing to be at work full time on that Monday.Neither of those three homes were ideal - between too small, the home already having multiple offers that were far above asking, and not the best location. Over the next 3 weeks we toured at least 10 more homes and looked through photos of dozens of more online.

We were looking for a home in a good district as discussed in the section above, at least 3 bedrooms, a space for an office - doesn't have to be a separate room but just an extra flex space, and a bit of a fixer upper but not too run down. We have the ability to do renovations ourselves and not only wanted to get a larger, better location home for a more affordable price - we also wanted to put our own style on it. Our ideal budget was under $1 million. This budget was 4x the amount we spent on our equally sized home in St. Louis just 8 years prior. The home we bought in St. Louis for $250,000 was also just completely renovated when we bought it. The home prices were quite jarring at first but we knew to expect higher prices. We were initially hoping to stay around $900k to allow for a more manageable mortgage. We were approved for $1.2 million, but did not want to even approach that.

Rejected Offers

We put an offer on one home we really liked after less than a week of searching. It was larger than we were initially looking for but we decided we liked the larger size so we could comfortably have another bedroom as a guest room for all of our out of town family, along with an office and a playroom. The home was in an ideal location. The reason why we were even able to think about affording it was because it was quite outdated and needing a bit of work. It was listed right near our max budget (950k). We put in an offer and it was not accepted. We later found out that it went for well over asking at $1.3 million. Our real estate agent and other people we talked to who were looking at the same time, were definitely not expecting such a seller's market at that the time. We knew we had to shift our strategy. We could no longer look at homes at our max budget expecting to get them for that amount and definitely not for less. There were likely going to be bidding wars.

After that first rejected offer, we decided that the location we were looking in wasn't going to be affordable for us. Even the smaller homes where we would sacrifice on space, were beyond our budget. And while location is considered everything, we did value having a slightly larger home in a B-tiered location. We decided to look in other areas that would still be within a 30 minute drive to Microsoft and that while not a top 5 school district in the state, were within the top 10-15.

We also reluctantly decided to up our budget to $1.1 million based on the homes we were looking at and our new requirements for a guest bedroom. We found another home that we really liked and put an offer in on it above asking. That one was also rejected and an offer 100k over ours was accepted. Looking back on it, I am glad we did not end up getting that house. After these two rejected offers, we were starting to feel a little desperate. Money started not to mean much anymore. If we weren't on what we felt like a time crunch, we would have probably been more picky on what we put offers on. We were just putting offers on anything that fit within our - not that picky - criteria. We put an offer on a 3rd house that we really liked. We ended up understanding more of the process at this point. Most of the homes went on the market on about Tuesday. They would have an open house scheduled for the following weekend but you could tour them with your agent before that. Typically, the seller's agent would not review the offers till after the open house (typically at night on a Sunday). As soon as a home went on the market that we liked, we requested a tour - which was usually on Wednesday or Thursday. We would get our offer ready and send it out the same day we toured it to show how eager we were. But then we would have to wait for days. This 3rd house, I was so excited for. I was already mocking up plans for how I was going to renovate it. I was already sketching out how I was going to update the backyard. I had a whole powerpoint ready. We did not get it. We were however, the second offer and asked if we wanted to be the back up offer. Aka, if the home sale fell through from the first buyers, then we would get the opportunity to buy it without another round of offers being accepted. We agreed but did not have high hopes.

This is probably where I should mention that in order to make our offer competitive, we were waving inspections. Everyone was. For all of the houses we put offers on, the sellers had done their own pre-selling inspections and shared them with us. We just had to trust their inspectors. So we did not put much stock in the sale falling through, because the accepted offer also waived their rights to doing an inspection. So the only reason the sale would fall through is if they could not produce the funds to buy it. Since these were all such competitive sales, the sellers made sure that the buyers they accepted had their pre-approval and had the funds.

View of downtown Seattle from the Bainbridge Island Ferry

Accepted Offer

Enough of these failed offers, what home did you actually buy? The 4th home we put an offer on was the one we bought. It was partially due to luck and speed. The process could have easily taken much longer. Like the previous homes, this one came on the market on a Wednesday, as soon as we saw it we messaged our real estate agent right away saying we wanted to see it immediately. We were able to get a tour that afternoon after my husband finished working. We loved it. Our real estate agent called the agent in charge of selling the house and they said they had no date when they were reviewing offers and would be accepting/rejecting as they come. That was unheard of, so we got our offer ready that day. I think due to our eagerness, they realized that maybe they should wait to review offers till they got a bit more. So after we submitted our offer, they told us that they would be reviewing them on Friday night. This still felt like a big win - it would just be 2 days worth of tours of people to compete with. There would be no open house.

We got the news that Friday night that our offer was accepted! We ended up putting an escalation clause on our offer, meaning if someone went over our initial offer, our offer would automatically go up to go above the competition offer to a specific amount. Our offer did end up escalating about half way up to our max from our initial offer. Did we stay under $1 million? - definitely not. But it was under our absolute max of $1.2 million so we could “afford” it according to the bank. When we bought there were high interest rates so we knew at least that we could possibly lower those later with refinancing to get our monthly payment down.

Our offer ended up being accepted on day 20 of us living in Seattle. Typically escrow is about a month due to all the paperwork that needs to be compiled and informing the city and everything else I don’t know enough about. We asked if we could quicken that process at all - since we knew that we would have to start paying for the storage of our items soon. We also wanted to get out of the small apartment, stop living out of our few suitcases and make our home a home. They were able to shorten it to 24 days. The previous owner of the home was already out of the house and moved into a new one so they were well on board to shorten the process too.

Everything went smoothly - other than I being the victim of identity theft and multiple credit cards being opened up in my name. This caused a lot of extra work for me and the underwriters of the loan. It ended up working out okay but just an added hassle.

Exploring our new city

We started exploring Seattle and the Eastside starting the day after we arrived - along with house hunting. Our short-term rental was in Redmond on the Eastside of Seattle and half-way through our house hunt we realized that we would not be buying a house there due to the high prices. However, while we were living there, we made the most of our location and explored Eastside parks and attractions. We moved in early January and if you know about Seattle weather, it might be one of the worst times to move to get a good impression of the city. It was rainy most days, there were several ice storms, we lost power for several hours. However, one thing I love, is exploring a new place - even if the weather is less than ideal. We got out every day. Somedays that meant we were in rain coats playing on a playground trying not to get too soaked. Somedays that meant going to the local children’s museum (even after just going there 5 days prior). We got a library card the first week and visited almost every library within a 20 minute drive of us. We picked about 10 books from home to pack with us and got dozens more each week from the library.

Seattle in January & February wasn’t all wet weather. There were many dry afternoons and even completely sunny days. One sunny weekend day we took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island for the most magical day trip. The weather was mild, the sky was clear and we explored beaches, playgrounds and the troll. We tried to time it up so we would take the ferry back to Seattle at sunset and even with a ferry delay, we were able to see the beautiful sunset at the beginning half of our journey. With the rest of the days being wet, the odd dry days felt extra magical and we stayed out most of the day.

After moving into our house in mid-february, we had less time to explore as we divided the time with unpacking and settling into our house. By spring time, we had more time again and made an effort to explore as much as we could before both kids would be starting preschool in September. We made a bucket list by season, and while we did not get to get to everything, we definitely saw a lot.

Some of our favorite experiences that first year included:

Strolling through the daffodil and tulip fields in Mount Vernon, WA
The Seattle Waterfront and Aquarium
A long weekend on San Juan Island
Hiking in Mount Rainier National Park
Kayaking in Lake Union
Getting memberships for birthday and Christmas gifts and getting familiar with the zoo and local museums
Tide pooling and exploring all the different beaches in the area

One of the best ways I found to discover places to visit and insider information about where to go, is following local instagram and TikTok creators.

Making Friends

Seattle is known for something called the “Seattle Freeze”. Which is just a fancy way to say it is hard for transplants to make friends. That Seattle natives are not overly friendly like other places in the country. You are not as likely to start chasing with someone and they make plans with you within an hour of meeting you as you might in like the south. You also will get a lot less smiles and small talk just walking the streets. To some degree this is true. However, it doesn’t mean that Seattle natives are not friendly or kind. There are so many kind and welcoming people in Seattle, but most people just tend to be more introverted home-bodies. There is less of a pressure here to have a picture perfect life with dozens of friends. Friendships feel more genuine and real. There are established friend groups that might be hard to break into. You will need to put more effort into making friends. That is hard to do, especially right after moving to a new place and getting used to the area.

The best way I know to overcome it is consistency and shared interests/hobbies. For me, that shared “hobby” was kids. I found friends through the preschool co-op or going to the same park every week or saying hi to neighbors. It is hard for me to make friends, so I feel pretty proud to have a couple of great friends in Seattle. If you are into reading - there are so many silent bookclubs which is essentially where you have an hour to read whatever book you are currently reading around other readers and socialize before and after. If you are into hiking, there are hiking clubs. For women, club cascade hosts events aimed at building a community. There are nature play groups for moms with young kids. Walking, running, bar crawl clubs. Getting out there and being consistent and being a bit proactive about inviting people out to coffee, is the way to go. But it is still hard if you don’t make it your priority.

How we have settled in, 2 years later

Job

I want to say it has all been great. However, my biggest fear in moving across the country, away from our family, in a high cost of living city - happened. My husband got laid off from Microsoft after 1.5 years at the company. Massive lay-offs are common in Seattle and they are just becoming even more common. Severance packages vary significantly and unfortunately we were not given a great one. With a large mortgage, diminished savings from renovating our house and very suddenly a huge loss of income - we struggled financially for a bit. As a first time applicant to unemployment in a time when loads of people were being laid off all at once - it took a long time to get unemployment from Washington State. However, once we did unemployment in Washington is the most generous in the country. It definitely did not pay all of our expenses - not even our mortgage. We did not take advantage of insurance options from Washington for a while and wish we would have gotten on that sooner. After a far more stressful job search, he did get another job in tech after 4.5 months. Not an ideal or dream position by any means - so he is still in the process of job searching.

Travel & exploring the pacific northwest

This has been even better than I imagined. There are almost endless day and weekend trips within a few hours of Seattle. While we historically still to more international travel - we were so drawn to the places that were just a short distance from us that we had less of a pull to jet off. This was great for our pocketbooks that were focusing on renovating our house at the same time. Over the last two years, our local travel included most of the smaller islands a ferry ride away from Seattle, the San Juan Islands, Mount Rainier National Park, the Oregon Coast, Portland, Leavenworth, Mount Vernon, Victoria, and Vancouver. There are also so many great short flights from Seattle - we visited Oahu, San Diego, Big Sur, and Los Angeles. This coming year we are going to Olympic National Park (we had previous gone in 2022 when we visited Seattle before moving), North Cascades National Park, Olympia, Tacoma and southern Washington coast. We will also be taking direct flights to Costa Rica and Iceland. This isn’t even scratching the surface for all the adventures there are. We feel so incredibly lucky to have so many places to explore and I do not see us getting tired of it for a long time.

Feeling “at Home”

After about a month of being in Seattle, people started asking us if it was starting to feel like home yet. At that point we were still in the apartment with a fraction of our things. We were loving Seattle and had no regrets moving, but we definitely didn’t feel a home. It felt a bit like a vacation but a vacation where you have this big pressure on your shoulders to settle in and find somewhere permanent to live. Once we moved into our house and unpacked most of our things, then it felt like home. That first summer in Seattle and all we explored, we felt pretty confident in saying that we definitely can imagine living here for the rest of our lives. Once the kids started preschool that September and we had a daily routine, it felt even more like home. That first Thanksgiving, we flew back to St. Louis to see family and that was when it hit us the most. St. Louis didn’t feel like home anymore. Seattle did.