Moving to Redmond - Need Advice!
 

Hey... looks like I'm going to take the j-o-b at Microsoft, so a move to the Redmond, WA area is in my very near future (like in 2-3 weeks). I have a couple of questions...

1 - I'm bringing my single turbo FD...

so I need to know how to dodge emissions. Currently, in Maryland, I get around things by hooking up my main cat + vette air pump + special PFC map + denatured alcohol in the tank, and then I can pass the roller-dyno-test. In Maryland, they can not look under the hood or make any picky type of inspection of the car.... Does it sound like this will work in WA? If I transfer my Maryland plates to WA, do they make the car go through some kind of "safety inspection"? Will they check anything retarded like main cat, etc? In any event, I plan on milking the situation as long as I can, and I don't plan on changing over my registration and plates any time soon since I just renewed them last month here in MD and they are good for 2 years :)

2 - OK... I'd like to find a nice house to live in (who doesn't!?). Requirements are...

o Near Microsoft's campus is a huge, huge plus. Traffic seems to suck ass in WA, and I'm totally fed up with driving in traffic from my job here in Maryland. What are the worst directions to live in from there? North/South/East/West? Which ways have better traffic situations?

o New houses are generally preferred.. I don't really wanna move in to some 20 year old house, unless somehow it's some really cool 100 year old historic type thing :)

o 3 car garage is preferred, with 2 as the minimum

o No offense, but I'm used to big ass stone houses that look a certain way... 95% of what I see on realtor.com is wood siding with weird wood shingles and stuff... don't they make any east-coast houses there? All the houses around Seattle look weird to me.

o I don't have any kids, so I don't care that much about school districts, or how big the yard is really.

o Budget is around 600-800 depending on exactly just how nice it is and how good the location is.

Thanks for the advice!

The emissions tests sound pretty much like you are used to...roller dyno, no real "inspection" to speak of. Last time, they even let me drive my own car on the dyno.

Mmm, 'kay.

Houston, we have a problem. If your budget is $600-800 per month, you pretty much need to throw out all your conditions above. For that money, we're talking single bedroom apartment with maybe a carport. Maybe.

sure he isnt talkin $600,000-$800,000?I think he wants to buy a house not rent one but that may just be how I read it

i read it the same way blake. looking to buy between 6&800,000.00

Budget is around 600-800? DO you mean $1600-$1800? Or 600,000 to 800,000?You can barely even get a studio apartment for 600-800 around here. If you want a house in the 2-3 car garage range your gonna be starting around $250,000 minimum price range, more like $350,000 for a nice new house, maybe a bit less depending on how far north you wanna live. $600,000 will get you a very nice house up here indeed. I am looking at 2 bedroom apartments in the $1200-$1500 range and thats 20 minutes south of Seattle.

Emissions are only required in King and Pierce counties. You can register your car in another county and you dont need to test for emissions at all. They only do sniffer tests up here from what I understand and the law is that if you fail you just have to show you spent at least $150 or $250 or something trying to fix it and if you still dont pass it dont matter. You can also just register your car in a different county although I am hearing that it might change to California standards for emissions around here in a few years.

Not sure how traffic is where your from but it only gets bad on I5 between Tacoma and a bit north of Seattle between 7am-9pm and 4:30pm-6pm, and I405 and its not even close to as bad as Southern California area.

First you say how much it sucks here now your moving here, good luck to ya lol. At least we have a lot of racing going on if you want to get your car out. http://pnwms.akilla.net/

We did have a pretty active RX-7 group before the big fallout but I am sure we will still be doing plenty of meets. You should try and attend the Apple Blossom Festival in May its a blast.

Oh, well, you might have a point! But if that were the case, I'd think he'd be working with a realtor who could steer him in the right direction. Anyway, that sounds much more realistic, particularly for the East-side.

Shameless plug: my mother is a Realtor in Seattle...Associate Broker, GRI, CRS. If you need a good Realtor, shoot me a PM.

If you need a home loan talk to me lol. Seriously.

if you want to know redmond, i know it too well. i deliver pizza there.
microsoft has multiple locations around redmond, bellevue, and issaquah.. so that may factor in if you'd like to reduce commuting to a minimum... are you going to be on the main campus?


600-800 per month? you'll be looking at an apartment.... my first apartment here was $700/month 10 years ago, in a crappy complex in bellevue... i was splitting a 2 br.

some houses can be had for $1200-1300/month, but not many... and you usually don't get a garage....
i know it sounds kinda negative, but the cost of housing is outrageous here. so be prepared for some shock. :ky:

Heh, no I mean buy for 600,000 to 800,000. Redmond is cheaper than where I live now, so I'm in good shape :)

I recently passed emissions with just a converter and the corvette air pump. I was exactly on the limit when I passed. The FD is probably a little better with emissions especially if you turn down your fuel pressure regulator (assuming its adjustable).

No two ways about it traffic is a touch bad in this area.

Redmond is nice, but yuppy. You should be able to find a very nice house in the 800 range. I would look around the Issaquah, Sammamish, Kirkland, Redmond area.

I take it your going to be at Microsoft? Maybe? I work right across the street in the overlake business park (yeah, yeah, its no microsoft building, and the looks will tell you that).

I register all my rotary cars out in Duvall at my moms address. No emissions out there.

Sweet another Single FD right next door. As the summer comes around it would be nice to have a meet and a drive somewhere.

Enjoy,
Joe

Oh, I missed this part somehow. Cool Congrats.


That should work, its been soo long since I have done emissions that I'm not sure what they do now. I know we are moving towards cali emissions but we are not there yet. I don't think they do a visual or a safety inspection.

Joe

BTW: I think there are a few FD at microsoft.

One grey one with a carbon fiber hood, unless he sold it. I let him borrow my datalogit once. Nice guy.

A MB one, I saw his car at Mikes shop, I think he purchased my intakes when I went single. He was fed up with Hayes when I met him.

Black FD I see all the time balling up 520 and getting off at microsoft. Saw it today actually. I think he posts, he's seen me before.

And I see a Red FD parked off of 152nd (the lower microsoft parking lots) when the suns out. I have no idea who this is.

So you'll fit right in.

Well, for 600,000-800,000 you should be able to find one hell of a house.

One more requirement for you...Come to the events here. I wanna see your FD. Ive seen many pictures of it and I want a close up look.

Emissions shouldnt be hard for you to pass. As long as you can pass the sniffer your fine. I just went in yesterday with my subie and they dont do any kind of visual.

get a house on lake washington or on lake samamish so so nice in the summer months, I don't know what a house on the lake would cost but if your coming from somewhere where a house cost more then 800,000 and your going to work at ms you can prolly make it happen.

Get ready to drive your FD on some really shitty roads so many bumps and potholes.

ohh yeah emmissions are pretty strict here, if you are worried about passing you most likely will fail, try to register the car outside of king county and I don't think you need to even take a test -not 100% sure on this

I have a black fd at ms :)

We should all meet up sometime...

check out west lake sammamish, or "abbey road". there are some pretty big/nice houses out there.

it will be AWESOME to have another rx around. just as long as you still have some respect for the fb's. the last time i waved at a guy in a fd he just glared at me.

oh yeah, emmissions suck. the limit on hydrocarbons is 180 or something. and i blew almost around 230 the first time, and i put some gtp in because i was new to rotarys back then and didn't know any better, and blew close to 600 hc. but yeah, if you register in duvall they dont care.

Duvall, Carnation, Fall City
 

Duvall, Carnation and Fall City all are easy drives to Microsoft land, I work at Safeco Insurance on 51st and 156th in Redmond(Microsoftland), the drive from Carnation to work is 20 minutes with no traffic, 35 min if you time it just right:-).

I got 3.87 acres out in Carnation, some nice houses in your range in our area around the lake neighborhoods(Lots of lakes in Carnation), no emissions at all, key word for no emissions is "Unincorporated King County"
I run air/fuel/spark and nothing else.
Do you want a rural or a suburban type of house.

Look forward to seeing you around.

First of all, to Rotarbeast... FBs suck. Hah, no I'm just kidding. I still regret selling my Turbo II FC, and I kinda always wanted to have one of each gen in my garage! A clean FB is a great looking car I think.

To Slammed GSL, it is sooo hard to think about houses when I'm not there to see them! I'm going to be living in Bellevue in temporary housing starting around Feb 27, and then it's house-hunting time! I won't have my RX-7, just my S2000.... so if you see an S2000 with MD plates, it's me!

My personal taste is for Suburban-type houses with 3 car garages. I like new houses in nice neighborhoods. Part of the thing that frustrates me about looking in Redmond, Bellevue, or Kirkland is that a lot of the new/nice places are mixed right next to houses with Camaros up on blocks and RV's parked on the front lawn.... not my style really... :) I'm definitely not against a big, rural pimp-pad, but I'm really really really fed up with commuting and would like to keep it as low as possible during rush hour. What's the deal with Sammamish? That area seems to have a good number of suburbia-type houses... is that road around the east side of the lake a giant parking lot in rush hour?

Seriously, you guys are helping out big time, so any advice you have is welcome. If possible, I'd like to go out for beers or something with some people around the start of March!!!!!!

looking for a 3 car garage in a suburbia neighborhood, 600-800k, maybe english hill? trilogy on novelty hill? one of the newer neighborhoods off of N.E 116th (almost english hill) ? maybe hidden ridge(technically sammamish)? sammamish is full of newer suburban neighborhoods. you might like trosacs(sp?) or klahani too.

yes, the infrastructure is decades behind.... East Lake Sammamish Parkway (which should be a 4 lane road) can be (is at rush hour) a parking lot. there are some routes around it, but they aren't always helpful or accessible...


don't want to live next to the guy with the camaro on blocks? why not? are you one of the do-gooder rats that goes around the neighborhood looking at others things & tattling to the city about what everybody else is doing wrong?

I like to be the "worst" person in the neighborhood... :) I'm usually the one running the air tools on Saturday morning, so me and the Camaro guy would probably get along fine hahahah. Actually, the main reason is that people are picky about houses and neighbors. If I'm buying a house, I want to be sure that its resale value is as high as possible. If I were renting, I couldn't care less if the neighbors had two camaros on blocks plus cock fighting on Friday nights.

I wouldnt worry too much about resale value in Redmond....prices are only going up there, and fast.

Another place to look, but might be too high, is Bridal Trails. Beautiful area, ALOT of nice bigass houses, but I think prices may be starting around 1mil.

About emissions, register your car somewhere other than King County, and you dont have to worry about it too much. I have my FD registered in Mount Vernon (50 miles north) at my grandparents house, and so I dont have to do emissions at all.

hey, FB's do not suck.

jerk.