My husband and I had a wonderful opportunity to visit the Seattle Floating Home Tour on September 9th. A hard-working team of volunteers showcased 12 homes in Seattle’s largest floating home area─Eastlake on Lake Union. Lake Union was made famous by the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” This is a fresh water body and there are currently 520 homes on the lake; no additional homes will be permitted.
The Seattle tour is presented every other year. Attendance is typically around 850, and tickets cost $55 per person.
My initial impressions were that the homes are newer than ours, with more conventional floor plans. Missing were the really eclectic styles and vintages of Sausalito. Secondly, the homes are really packed close together with almost zero lot lines in some cases (we could barely see the water). Unless you had an end slip with amazing views of the Seattle skyline you’d be looking into your neighbor’s window. What was very disappointing was the length of the lines for each house; I was told that this was a complaint every year. Thank goodness the weather was perfect.
An additional note is that the hulls here can be made of logs, concrete with Styrofoam or air-filled barrels. One realtor stated that some of the log hulls were over 100 years old─pretty amazing! Most of the slips in this area are owned by the home owners but there are berth fees.