Seattle Floating Homes and Seattle Houseboats – Part 5 – Locations

Seattle Floating Homes Listings – Seattle Houseboats For Sale

The floating homes and houseboats in the Seattle area are all centered around Lake Union.  The Puget Sound waterfront is usually too rough for year-round moorage, and even Lake Washington with its great size can pick up a lot of wind and boat traffic, causing some rocky waters.  Lake Union, on the other hand, has caps on boat speed and a smaller surface area to pick up bad weather.  It’s fairly calm year-round.

Eastlake – This is the home of the most magnificent floating homes.  While you can find some smaller homes for around $400k, there are also high-end communities with $2 million+, two story modern floating homes.  These are well-established communities and some newly-constructed communities.  Eastlake is the most well-known neighborhood and houses a large number of homes.

Portage Bay – This area also has a large number of floating homes, and is well protected in its small cove.  Many floating homes reside here, from small huts to full-sized traditional homes.  Located off the Montlake neighborhood, just across from the Seattle yacht club, there’s plenty of boat traffic to view from the decks.

Northlake – This shoreline on the South end of the Wallingford neighborhood has quite a few houseboat/liveaboard communities.  You’ll find everything from small sailboats to paddlewheel boats that are used as residences.  Gasworks Park is on this shore along with some marine industrial properties.

Westlake – Welcome to Sleepless In Seattle.  Tom Hanks’ houseboat is here, along with a small outcropping of other floating homes.  This area is not as well-known for houseboats, save the movie star residence.  There are a lot of commercial/entertainment businesses in Westlake, which is separated by a steep slope from the East end of Queen Anne.

Canal/Queen Anne – Some of the least expensive houseboats/floating homes can be found here.  The views aren’t as good as on Lake Union, but it still has great access to the lake and to the Puget Sound.  Most of the homes are located on the North shore of the Queen Anne neighborhood.

Searching for houseboats on the MLS can be difficult.  Real Estate agents vary in how they identify the neighborhood of the homes.  One houseboat could be listed 3 different ways–Lake Union, Northlake, or Wallingford.  Here are some of the most common:

Eastlake Floating Homes

Lake Union Floating Homes

Portage Bay Floating Homes

Queen Anne Floating Homes

Wallingford Floating Homes

Westlake Floating Homes

Although there have been other houseboats moved around to different parts of Seattle, the permanently established communities are all based within these neighborhoods and offshoots of the Lake Union waterfront.

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
Seattle Real Estate Brokers
Seattle Waterfront Homes
SeattleHome.com  (206) 552-8820

Tags: lake union houseboats, lake union real estate, lake union waterfront, seattle floating homes, seattle houseboats, seattle waterfront homes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.