As mentioned Seattle is one of the worst places in the whole country, for all the reasons listed and more. In the future it will only get worse, not better. Lord only knows what kind of crazy laws they can cook up regarding real estate. I grew up most of my life in western Washington, and lived in Seattle proper for 15 years... I finally left last year for Idaho.
EVERYTHING is falling apart there because the place is run by lunatics. As I told people for the last several years I was there, as everything was falling apart, "There's a difference between being liberal, and being bat s**t crazy. These guys have crossed that line." Seattle was plenty liberal when I moved there, but the politicians were still living in reality, and trying to actually make things functional. At this point they're passing bonkers laws, that will obviously have horrible effects in the real world, simply so they can virtue signal. That isn't a good sign for investing there, or anything else. If something cannot work in reality, but you do it anyway to prove how kind hearted you are, all that will do in the long run is destroy everything. There's a reason millions of jobs and people are fleeing from places like CA, WA, NY, etc. I wish the whole world was sunshine, rainbows, and kittens too... But it's not, so you need to work within what is possible and practical. These people don't do that anymore.
A Bill Clinton in the 90s kinda liberal can try to be soft around the edges, and compassionate, and whatever... But at the end of the day they still realized some stuff was not possible, too crazy, etc. The people running these hyper woke areas give zero consideration to real world outcomes. It will not end well. I think this is an already in progress repeat of the 60s/70s when people flooded out of major metros because they went to hell in a hand basket. Time will tell.
I'm more or less libertarian, so line towing conservatives definitely annoy me on some issues too, but in 2021 I'll take those issues over the crazy in progressive areas in a heartbeat. At least conservative areas have functional societies. It seems like hardcore progressive are literally trying to destroy civilization in the places they run.
Any which way, if investing in Seattle were the only option the world, yeah you can probably make it work... But it's not. So why invest in an area where the pricing is already so high there can't be much more meat left on the bone (to equal the returns over the last 7-8 years in percentage terms you'd need 3-4 million dollar 3 bedroom houses in 2030. Does that seem realistic?)... The laws are waaay slanted against you now... The laws will only continue to get worse... At a time when big tech has finally realized they don't need to concentrate their whole workforce in a half dozen cities... I could go on. I don't think SF and Seattle have bright futures without some major changes being made
Invest somewhere that's more favorable, and has more meat on the bone. I wish I'd had more cash to deploy a few years ago as I saw several areas as coming up before most people did. But I'll do fine going forward where I'm at now, so no complaints.
