Tacoma neighborhoods, and the houses in them

Proctor is a small business district centered on North 26th Street and Proctor, with the Blue Mouse Theatre, a Saturday farmers market, and a few walkable blocks of shops and restaurants.

The houses around it are mostly Craftsman bungalows and foursquares from the early 1900s, many on modest lots with alleys behind them. Buyers here care about original details like fir floors and built-ins. They also know what often comes with them, and expect answers about oil tanks and side sewers in almost every house.

The district shares its name with Stadium High School, the chateau-style building on the bluff that was begun as a hotel in the 1890s and finished as a school. Some of the city’s oldest and largest houses are here, many of them Victorians looking out over Commencement Bay, mixed in with early apartment buildings and newer condominiums. Wright Park and its conservatory sit at the south edge, and downtown is a short walk.

Many big houses here were divided into apartments at some point, and some have since been put back together. The permit history on a house like that is worth reading before you list. Expect a buyer’s inspector to trace how the plumbing and wiring were split for the apartments and joined back up.

The North End covers much of the peninsula in the city’s northwest corner. Much of it sits on a grid of tree-lined streets with houses from the early twentieth century, Craftsman above all with a fair share of Tudors, and later mid-century houses filling the gaps. Proctor and the Sixth Avenue business district serve it, and Point Defiance Park anchors the far end.

Some streets on the slopes have water views. Hillside lots and big old street trees bring drainage and root questions that a buyer’s inspector will ask about. When a North End house is in good repair, it generally draws enough interest that a well-prepared listing is worth considering first.

Old Town is where Tacoma began, the original settlement on the slope above the water where Job Carr built his cabin in the 1860s. North 30th Street has a small cluster of businesses, and St. Peter’s Episcopal, a small wooden church from the 1870s, is close by.

Old cottages sit next to newer houses built for the view, on streets steep enough to notice. The slope that gives those views also raises questions about retaining walls and drainage. Below it all runs Ruston Way, a long stretch of waterfront path and restaurants.

Point Ruston is a newer mixed-use neighborhood at the end of Ruston Way, built on the site of the old ASARCO copper smelter after a long environmental cleanup. Homes here are mostly condominiums and apartments, with shops and restaurants at street level and a waterfront promenade that leads toward Point Defiance Park. Part of the development lies in the Town of Ruston, a separate municipality.

Selling here is a different exercise from selling a century-old house. Buyers ask about the homeowners’ association, its reserves and its dues, and about the resale certificate the association provides. Have the association’s documents ready early, because a buyer’s lender and agent will ask for them.

University Place is its own city, incorporated in 1995, west of Tacoma along Puget Sound. Much of its housing went up in the decades after the Second World War: ramblers, split-levels, daylight basements, and larger homes on view lots toward the water. Chambers Bay, the golf course and park built on a former gravel mine, sits on its shoreline. Most of the city is in the University Place School District.

Houses of this age bring their own list: original windows, electrical panels from brands that insurers ask about, and plumbing that may be due for replacement. Knob and tube is rare in houses this young, and oil tanks are less common than in the North End, so the list of buyer questions tends to be shorter.