Home is where … This story is part of a limited series about homebuying in key places within the Seattle metro area. Read previous stories about Bremerton, Issaquah, Lynnwood, North Bend, Shoreline, Tacoma and Woodinville as well Seattle’s neighborhoods of Ballard, Beacon Hill and West Seattle.
When Beth Elliott and her husband, John Rogers, decided to move back to the Puget Sound from the East Coast in 2022, they had no thought of buying a house in South King County.
As former Bellevue residents, their first choice was Northgate or another Seattle neighborhood, but the prices were way too high.
So, they settled on Federal Way.
“The more we looked around here, and it was a pretty short search, the more we thought, all right, this is the place that’s affordable,” Elliott said. “The houses were at that time seemingly half the price.”
But price wasn’t the only reason. The city also surprised them.
“We love a bunch of things,” she said.
Federal Way has long drawn homebuyers for its affordability and location between Seattle and Tacoma. Many Seattle renters buy a first home here.
Federal Way’s older neighborhoods have big trees, large lots and space between homes, and the city has numerous parks and public gardens.
“When I work with clients, I always say how underrated Federal Way is,” said Dulce Mason, a broker for John L. Scott, who owns a home in Federal Way.
“We have everything that people in Seattle love as far as nature goes, except we don’t have the traffic or the astronomically high purchase prices.”
Priced to go
Federal Way is more affordable than Seattle and some nearby communities in South King, like Renton, even though the prices haven’t come down much from their 2022 peak.
Entry-level houses, typically a two- or three-bedroom fixer with a yard, start at around $500,000, agents say. In June, the median sale price for single-family homes was $677,500, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
Many of the city’s homes were built between the 1960s and 1980s for working-class families. But Federal Way has some pricey areas. Multimillion-dollar houses with water views are perched on the bluffs along Dash Point Road, which twists and turns under a thick tree canopy.
Like much of the Puget Sound, Federal Way’s housing market has slowed this year.
There were 315 single-family home sales through June, slightly below the 322 homes sold last year for the same period, according to the listing service.
The market, however, isn’t as competitive as last year. Homes are sitting, and buyers want price reductions and other concessions.
“It’s taking a long time to sell the properties unless you have the perfect location, perfect property, priced all ready to go,” said Dolly Kaur, a broker for Keller Williams who owns a home in the city.
Tiffany Go and her husband listed their Federal Way rambler this spring, but it didn’t go well.
The house sat for a month with little interest, then twice sales fell through after the buyers couldn’t secure financing.
Go and her husband bought the 1,320-square-foot house at the market peak in 2022 for $445,000. Like many, they chose Federal Way because of its affordability, moving from a rental in West Seattle.
The quarter-acre property has towering trees in the back and a fenced backyard. She said the block has improved, and many of the homes have been flipped and renovated since they moved in.
“It’s sleepy, quiet, mostly families, and it’s multicultural,” Go said.
However, they are now raising a toddler, and the house no longer meets their needs. Go, a manager for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, now works more often at an office in South Lake Union, so they want to be closer to the city center. Feeling drained, they pulled the house off the market, and plan to try again in the winter or next spring.
“Our goal has never been to make money, we just don’t want to take a loss on the property,” she said.
‘Sense of place’
Despite the slowdown in the market, Federal Way has what buyers around Puget Sound have been favoring this year. That is, single-family homes with yards and being close to Seattle.
With a population of 100,000, the city is about 30 minutes by car to Seattle’s downtown and 20 minutes to Tacoma. In December, the light rail station opened with the 8-mile 1 Line extension that connected Federal Way to Seattle and as far north as Lynnwood. Commuters can hop the train and be in downtown Seattle within an hour.
Mayor Jim Ferrell said he anticipates growth around Federal Way’s downtown rail station. This main commercial area between Pacific Highway and Interstate 5 is dominated by big box stores and The Commons at Federal Way, a mall.
However, the city wants to create a more walkable and cohesive city center, with more people living and working near the station. In 2016, the city built a park with a play area and picnic tables on nearly 4 acres just north of the station, and the 44,000-square-foot Performing Arts & Event Center with a 700-seat theater opened nearby in 2017.
The next phase would add apartments and town homes, street-level retail and some office space on roughly 8 acres of city-owned land at the site of a former Target near the station. That project is one to two years away from the permitting phase, Ferrell said. Some of the mall property might also eventually be redeveloped.
“What Federal Way has always missed is that traditional sort of downtown feel,” Ferrell said. “What we’re trying to do is create a sense of center and sense of place.”
There’s only been a modest number of new homes built for sale. Federal Way hasn’t seen higher-density town home and condo development in recent years, but 159 single-family homes were built over the past 5 ½ years, according to city officials. Home construction slowed after 2023, however.
‘Feels very safe’
Federal Way has its charms and drawbacks, according to recent homebuyers and longtime residents.
Amanda Opuszynski, 39, and her husband moved from Ballard in early 2021 and, like many, were priced out of that neighborhood. They bought a 1,300-square-foot rambler for $450,000.
“We were looking for more space for sure, and that was not going to happen in Seattle,” she said.
Opuszynski, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, has mixed feelings about the city. There’s easy access to shopping and nice parks within city limits and just outside it, such as the 461-acre Dash Point State Park with its trails and sandy beach. While Federal Way isn’t especially walkable, it is easy to get around the city by car.
Federal Way also has become safer. Overall crime declined by 21% through June from the same period last year and incidences have fallen dramatically over three years in several categories, including burglary, theft and assaults, according to statistics released by the city in July.
“It feels very safe,” Opuszynski said of her immediate neighborhood off 20th Avenue S at the northeastern tip of the city. “I know that’s not true of all of Federal Way, but I’ve left my car unlocked by accident overnight with my laptop in it and it’s untouched the next day.”
But there are also drawbacks. Airport noise is an omnipresent reality from planes taking off and approaching nearby Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Many blocks don’t have sidewalks.
“It feels a little bit like a giant strip mall, and the area where we are is pretty busy,” Opuszynski said.
“It’s not the kind of place where I would want to go take a walk anywhere. You’re kind of driving everywhere you’re going to go.”
On Elliott’s block near the library and Celebration Park, most of the homes are ramblers with neatly cut grass and flowering gardens, but a few homes are in disrepair.
Elliott, 67, and Rogers, 70, lived for 17 years in Bellevue in the 1990s and 2000s before moving to Ohio and then to Boston. Their daughter and her fiancé moved back to the Seattle area. So, in 2022, they decided to return, buying a three-bedroom, 2,233-square-foot home built in 1966 for $600,000.
She said the neighborhood is highly diverse. Her neighbor’s little girl shouts out “Hi!” to her almost every day when she’s out getting the mail.
The area near Elliott’s house is walkable. The home is a little more than a mile from the rail station, and she also walks through Celebration Park to an office on Ninth Street where she works as a therapist.
Federal Way, she said, is more working-class than Bellevue and other places they’ve lived, and they see more signs of homelessness.
Elliott said she wouldn’t feel comfortable walking alone at night from the light rail station and some of the city’s grittier pockets. However, she feels safe during the day.
“I don’t think it’s really that dangerous,” she said. “It’s just that it’s a little more edgy than any place that I’ve ever lived.”
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.