Rising property prices razing older houses

By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The four communities are also characterized by a continuous face-lift as older, smaller homes are bulldozed and replaced by spacious new houses.

The trend has been ongoing for years but has stepped up in the 1990s. In Clyde Hill, for instance, at least 16 homes are being demolished and rebuilt this year, the most in any year this decade.

Clyde Hill Mayor Phil Rourke said, "A lot of people (who bought their homes decades ago for less than $100,000) say, 'I could never afford to buy the house I live in.' "

Through the first eight months of 1998, the average home sales price ranged from slightly more than $1 million in Medina to nearly $525,000 in Clyde Hill.

Medina resident Joseph Brazen, a real estate broker who works the greater West Bellevue area, says jaws drop when he shows clients a three-bedroom, 30-year-old rambler with a carport on the market for $400,000.

Forget the house. The person who buys that property, Brazen says, likely will spend an additional amount equal to the sales price to build a new house that will "bring the property into the '90s."

From the cozy breakfast nook in a house he built nearly a half-century ago in Clyde Hill, Fike once enjoyed a panoramic view of Lake Washington, the distant Seattle skyline and nearby fields.

The view has eroded over time as houses came in and trees grew. But Fike, 93, and his 91-year-old wife, Beth, still find it a "luxury" to be situated in Clyde Hill, watching the community evolve and being part of the changes.

"Someday, when the time comes to carry my wife and I out," Fike says, "someone will tear down this house and put a new one up."

The changes are not universally welcomed in communities where roots run deep and neighborhood children grow up together, move away and sometimes return with their own families.

"My neighbors have been my neighbors for 30-some years," says Medina resident Patty Oscar, head secretary at Sacred Heart parish in Clyde Hill.

One of Oscar's elderly neighbors had pleaded with Oscar not to succumb to the rebuilding trend. "Promise me you won't do this," the woman begged before she died.

Property changes hands most often in Clyde Hill, where Whiting and her husband moved in 1989 from Kent because they saw the area as a good place to raise a family.

"Nine years ago, we were the only working couple on the street," Whiting says while watching her 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son play in the water at Medina Beach Park. "Now people are selling homes and young families are moving in."