I ended up moving to Maple Valley. $1M will actually buy you a reasonable house here (assuming you don't need a large yard), it's very green and the schools are

I ended up moving to Maple Valley. $1M will actually buy you a reasonable house here (assuming you don't need a large yard), it's very green and the schools are fantastic. I'm almost fully remote anyway so the occasional long commute to the office isn't much of an issue - if I had to be there in person every day it would be different as a rush-hour commute is almost an hour (it's 35 minutes normally) to downtown Seattle. Bellevue is closer of course. Almost every person in my neighborhood works in tech and most of them used to live in Seattle but got fed up with the prices and the size of homes available for any kind of non-insane price. Issaquah is another option at around $1.4M for a nice house. It also has great schools etc.