Originally published Saturday, July 12, 1997

By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Houses in Everett tend to be more affordable than elsewhere in the Puget Sound area. A 1995 survey by the Seattle-Everett Real Estate Report found that the average new house in Everett cost about $30,000 less than the average new home in Snohomish County, and $50,000 less than a new home in King County.

"Generally speaking, the farther you go north (from Seattle), the more you get for your dollar," says Bob Crawford, a sales associate with Century 21 North Homes Realty.

Crawford figures the large number of sales in the luxury neighborhoods of Mukilteo, Edmonds, Mill Creek and other South Snohomish County neighborhoods is responsible for boosting the average county price.

For most buyers, finding a location close to their jobs is still the most important factor in choosing a city or neighborhood, Crawford says. The exception is the young, energetic buyer looking for an inexpensive fixer-upper.

Everett's old two-bedroom, single-bath millworker cottages -- in various states of repair -- sell for $85,000 to $110,000, according to Crawford.

In a survey of May 1997 sales, the Northwest Multiple Listing Association found Everett's lowest-priced home sale was $67,000. The most expensive home was $375,000. And in Everett, it's possible that those two homes could be next-door neighbors. The city's real estate is curiously democratic, with early industrialists' mansions next door to their millworkers' cottages.

Many early mansion owners worked up from menial jobs and didn't see themselves as being in a different social strata, says David Dilgard, a librarian in Everett Public Library's regional history section.

Roland Hartley, whose recently restored mansion is in a neighborhood of much smaller homes, is a good example. Hartley, who was governor of the state in the late 1920s and 1930s, became a rich man, "but his values were still basically the same values he had before he became wealthy," Dilgard says. "He was sort of a Horatio Alger type."