One of the fastest growing areas in the Puget Sound region is between Mill Creek and Bothell.
Hundreds of new homes are being built in the North Creek area and construction is expected to continue for the next several years.
One firm that tracks housing data found the area had the highest number of new homes sold in 2014 for Snohomish and King counties.
And it wasn’t even close.
In the area between the two cities, 616 new homes were sold last year, according to MetroStudy, formerly New Home Trends.
The next closest was 335 around Newcastle south of Bellevue in King County and 223 around Mukilteo, said Todd Britsch, MetroStudy’s regional director for Seattle and Oregon.
Most of the new homes are being built in the unincorporated county, in areas that will eventually be incorporated by either Mill Creek or Bothell.
The numbers don’t surprise Britsch.
“When you look at where the jobs are being created and the buildable land, it’s kind of a no-brainer,” Britsch said.
More tech jobs are coming online in Redmond and Bellevue, but the existing homes on the East Side are too expensive for many workers.
“Even though they’re coming in with great jobs, they can’t afford a home in Redmond or Bellevue for the most part,” Britsch said.
People who live between Mill Creek and Bothell are just minutes away from I-5 and I-405. And improvements to Highway 9 allow people to get onto those freeways quicker, said Bob Vick, senior vice president for Sundquist Homes in Lynnwood.
“In the old days, it was Nowheresville,” Vick said. “You couldn’t get to it. Now that’s all turned on its ear.”
Another reason that the area is so hot right now is the Northshore School District, Vick said.
Homes in the Bothell-Canyon Park area sell for as much as $100,000 more than similar-sized homes west of the Bothell-Everett Highway in the Martha Lake area.
“Generally speaking a large chunk of that is related to schools,” Vick said.
Among the new arrivals are Ryan and Christen Lambert and their children, Alison, 4, and Nolan, 1 1/2, and their dog, Cooper. They purchased a 3,500-square-foot home at Stratford Court in Bothell in January.
“Everybody has been here for a year or less,” Ryan Lambert said. “The nice thing is everybody is starting off on the same foot.”
He works as an energy-efficiency engineer for Puget Sound Energy in Bothell. Christen Lambert works in marketing for a Catholic high school in Seattle.
Many of their neighbors work in the tech industry. The couple see their neighbors loading into vanpools headed for Microsoft on the East Side or Amazon in Seattle.
The Lamberts are still debating whether to put their kids in Catholic schools or the Northshore School District.
They heard from neighbors that the elementary school closest to their home added nine students in just one week in February.
When they were house hunting, it was clear that the schools are being marketed to newscomers.
“It seems like every house we looked at moving into, they told us that this is the Northshore School District,” Christen Lambert said.
The Northshore School District has already been bracing for an expected jump in students enrolling on the Snohomish County side of the school district.
Construction is under way on the Northshore School District’s fourth high school, which is expected to be ready for students by fall 2017.
The $130 million project, to be called North Creek High School, is being built on 61 acres off 35th Avenue, between 188th and 192nd streets southeast.
The new high school is one piece of a three-part district plan to handle a growing student population, particularly on the north part of the district.
The other two pieces are reconfiguring grades at elementary, middle and high schools and adjusting boundaries within the district for individual schools.
Another factor in the growth between Mill Creek and Bothell is the lack of housing inventory in some parts of King County, said Deidre Haines, of Coldwell Banker Bain in Lynnwood.
She said some families may be looking at living closer to their jobs, but just can’t find a house.
So they’re choosing to travel a little farther to get their home.
“The buyers are gradually moving more and more north,” Haines said. “Maybe they’ve been looking in Ballard and Green Lake can’t get a house. So they’re willing to move across the line into Snohomish County.”
Builders realize how popular the North Creek area is and are looking at building east of Mill Creek and Bothell, said Sundquist’s Vick said.
The drawback is that lot prices are going up quickly in the area.
“We’re out of the era of buying projects that were bank owned from the downturn,” Vick said.
MetroStudy tracks housing trends in 45 submarket areas in Snohomish and King counties.
The area between Mill Creek and Bothell is called the North Creek Submarket Area, said Britsch, who has worked for the firm for 14 years.
Britsch said that he expects more people will be coming soon. He said the Millennial generation is getting ready to have kids of their own.
“Contrary to popular belief you cannot allow you allow your 5-year-old to play at the corner of Fifth and Pike (in downtown Seattle)” Britsch joked. “These Millennials who love living in Belltown close to the bars and close to their jobs — when they have children they’ll begin to migrate to the suburbs.”
And that means even more people moving to the area. Barring a recession or an unforeseen economic setback, it should continue for another three to five years.
“At that point the North Creek Submarket Area will run out of buildable land,” Britsch said. “What you’re going to see really in this area is incredible appreciation strictly due to supply and demand.
“We’re already seeing parts of the Puget Sound are react very similar to the San Francisco Bay area.”
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