SEATTLE NEIGHBORHOODS: Green Lake
Welcome to your guide to the Green Lake neighborhood, Seattle and Green Lake real estate where you can search for Green Lake houses, Green Lake condos and Green Lake townhomes on an easy to use interactive map.
Green Lake real estate may not have the panoramic views of the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains that Ballard and Magnolia have, but as the name suggests, it does have something that creates lake-envy in other neighborhoods. What’s more, instead a bunch of private homes built on its shores, hogging it for themselves, the lake is surrounded by a very (no exaggeration) popular public park. Green Lake homes are highly sought after, particularly when they have a view of the water.
The lake is surrounded by grass, a 2.8 mile paved trail, tennis courts, a running track, a pitch ‘n’ putt course, a theater, baseball diamonds, soccer fields, the Seattle Zoo to the south and of course, throngs of humanity. Bad weather is no deterrent to endorphin junkies of varying stamina, shape and size. There are solo joggers, teams of joggers, joggers with dogs and / or prams, joggers with the latest in fabric fashion technology and unfortunately an occasional jogger with those really short shorts form the 70’s! In fact, if you see a jogger within 10 blocks of the lake, they are either going there or leaving the lake. You don’t have to be a jogger to live In Green Lake, but it doesn’t hurt.
Green Lake is bordered by Phinney Ridge and Greenwood to the west, Fremont and Wallingford to the south, Ravenna to the east and Northgate to the north. Back in 1911, as part of Seattle’s beautification project, the lake was lowered by 7 feet to increase the shoreline. Up that that time, the lake drained into Lake Washington via Ravenna Creek, which subsequently dried up and became what is now Ravenna Boulevard. It was cosmetic surgery gone wrong. The lake became stagnant and foul smelling with frequent algae blooms and in later years, pollution from heavy industry bordering the lake. Over the past few decades, public and government intervention have cleaning up the lake and it now looks a lot better now than it must have back in the good old days.
GREEN LAKE REAL ESTATE
As with much of North Seattle, Green Lake homes are dominated by older single family homes including Tudors, bungalows with wrap around porches and colonials. There is a wide price range but one thing is certain, the closer you are to the lake, you’ll pay a premium relative to a comparable home further away.
Green Lake homes for sale has seen increasing numbers of condo and townhome developments which has made living there more affordable for many first time buyers who would be priced out of the Green Lake house market. As with other Seattle neighborhoods, the recession has slowed much of the new construction frenzy which explains why the old Vitamilk Dairy site now is a just a large fenced-off hole in the ground.
What’s the Green Lake real estate market doing?
Real estate statistics for Green Lake houses (single family homes) and Green Lake condos.
For an explanation of how these numbers are generated, please click here. Note that graphs and tables were generated by crunching data from the North West Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS). Data is updated every two months and was last updated at the start of October 2011.
Please click on the slide show to see the sales statistics:
If you would like more information or have any questions regarding Green Lake homes, please feel free to contact me.
