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Tacoma has been home for nearly 40 years. Grew up here, stayed here, and for the last eleven years have been selling the city’s most characterful homes — the old Craftsmans, the Victorians, the neighborhoods most people don’t know exist until someone shows them.
This podcast is an insider look at a city most people underestimate. Every week pulling back the curtain on the neighborhoods, the history, the homes, and the stories that never make it into a listing description.
This isn’t a real estate podcast. It’s a love letter to Tacoma — and an invitation to fall in love with it too.
Welcome to the Wonderlux Real Estate podcast number three, as we continue to improve and adapt and learn how to do this. Thank you for joining in with us. We'd love to hear your
Mellie:feedback and we're ready to go. Yeah, let's get started. I'm really excited about this
Kierstyn:podcast because I like Procter and we're gonna be talking about Procter today. So number one, who is the perfect Procter buyer?
Mellie:Do you think, in your opinion, the type of person who would be the happiest living in Procter? The perfect Procter buyer, I would say, is definitely someone who loves community. You love the sidewalks, you love going for walks. Yeah. One of the things I absolutely love about Procter is how many people are out and about walking their dogs, strollers.
Mellie:You're gonna just get a lot of that lifestyle of community. Yeah. So we have the farmers market on Saturdays. It's one of the only ones that stay open longer,
Kierstyn:not just in the summertime. Right? Yes. They do stay open, like, springtime. They stay open to Proctor's Market.
Mellie:Yes. I believe it's annual, but once a month, I think, in the I have to double verify that. But yeah. Yeah. Then there's just great shops.
Mellie:I love you know how much I love Metmarkt on a rainy day and on a sunny day and on a bad day? Yeah. Metmarkt always. They've been great for our client gifts. Like, they've been great for getting cakes and celebrating with clients and great schools for kids.
Mellie:And then there's a lot of parks. Yeah. Huge park around the corner. It's basically like going on a mini hike, and you can even walk down to the water. It's a lot of natural forest, and it's just very beautiful.
Mellie:You're like, wow. I'm in the middle of Tacoma. And Yeah. Here I can go do, like, a little mini hike. You're telling me about that one time we we got past it.
Mellie:It's fun. When I was doing my, like, crazy walks all the time, I was that was one of the ones I used to really love going to. Yeah. But Procter in itself is such a great area because the homes are so well kept. You're gonna find a lot of history there, and the trees, one of my clients said, is its own main character.
Mellie:Yeah. So the trees there are so pretty. Right? They're very old. They are.
Mellie:And they just give another vibe to the town. They do. The shade, the birds. We all know I love the birds. So It's very like a neighbor very neighborhood.
Mellie:Mister Rogers would be very approving of it. Yeah. He would. It would be a mister Rogers neighborhood. Yeah.
Mellie:Very, like, friendly on the outside. It's very welcoming. Yes.
Kierstyn:And a lot of greenery that
Mellie:you don't expect. Gardening. A lot of gardening. A lot of gardening. Yeah.
Mellie:A lot of hospitable neighbors. I love touring in the Proctor area. People have, like, a pride of their home that, you it's not where they're coming off snobby to me, they're coming off where they really take care of it. They love it. They love it.
Mellie:And when they sell them, a lot of times they're really excited to hand that off to somebody else that they know will love it too. Yeah. And have another generation. These homes are older than a lot of us and have gone through multiple families and sometimes the houses decide too. Yeah.
Mellie:So just to wrap it up in a couple words, what would the perfect buyer be looking for in Procter? Community? Community, historic homes. Historic homes. Beauty of nature?
Mellie:Saw It's deer walking around true.
Kierstyn:It's true. We saw a deer in the middle.
Mellie:And a baby deer.
Kierstyn:Yeah. A mama deer and a baby deer.
Mellie:Very Caught me off guard.
Kierstyn:And that's not the first time that we've seen deer
Mellie:in Tacoma. And then a lot of small businesses too, right, that you can support. Yeah. So, if
Kierstyn:you like having local distance or local businesses within, like, walking distance or biking distance, you can wake
Mellie:up a Saturday morning and, like, go for a walk to your favorite coffee shop. Get some flowers from the market and some sourdough bread. Yeah, so those types of things make you happy. Procter could be for you and that could be what makes up a prime Procter buyer.
Kierstyn:Yes. What makes Procter different from every other pocket in North Tacoma?
Mellie:I would definitely say this is probably an opinion question, and that many people probably have a different take on it. As you know, like, I raise my kids in more, like, the Point Defiance, North Tacoma area. Yeah. My son went to Mason in Proctor. I'm in Proctor a lot.
Mellie:Mhmm. However, Proctor is a lot more close to other areas once you go, you know, and we'll do another one probably on North Tacoma, the Point Defiance area too. Yeah. We call that the Deep North. And because it's just it takes a lot longer to get to places.
Mellie:Right? So if you need to be more centrally located, Procter's a great area. There's also just, like I mentioned, the, you know, the established community of of I don't know how to explain it. I think I think once you go and we drive around and we look through Procter, like, people just get it. Yeah.
Mellie:Like It's true. You can tell if it's for you or if it's not. And that's one things that
Kierstyn:you recommend your clients to do when they're looking at houses. You were just telling me Yes. You have buyers, you have
Mellie:them go take a little walk around the neighborhood. Yes. Yeah. I generally will, like, write down, like, a couple of grocery stores, a couple coffee shops, and if they can go walk to the I just had one recently, like, recommend they go walk to the elementary school because that was one of the things they would do is walk their kids to school every morning. So I said, why don't we go for a walk?
Mellie:And we did that with a couple houses, and that really did help them figure out what one was more ideal for them. And and it was coincidentally in the Broctor neighborhood Yeah. But more towards stadiums so that they were able to go to Downing. And there's just some really great elementary schools in the Proctor area. My kids went to Sherman, that was a little bit more towards Point Defiance, and then Washington, which is right in the heart of Procter.
Mellie:Yeah. What
Kierstyn:are the characteristics of a Procter home compared to other Tacoma homes? And being specific, so interior, exterior, woodwork,
Mellie:all of it. Yeah, I mean, so all of Tacoma, I would say, you know, Procter is one of the higher income brackets. So with that, there is going to be able to be a little bit more investment into the home's care of keeping the when you repair a home that is a historic home it does cost more money to keep it up to the historic value. Yeah. Finding contractors who, for example, even in my own home here, when we were working on the siding, you know, my dad was like, it would be easier to just remove the wainscoting and put new wainscoting in, but I said, no, we're keeping the original 1908, and he kind of didn't understand.
Mellie:Yeah. Because and it took me days to sand it and refinish it, whereas we could have just ripped it out, put in new lids, put in. So if having those, like, nineteen oh eight pieces of wood throughout your home is important to you, there is a cost to having it more in a pristine or meticulous care. And we find that a lot in Procter. We find a lot of homes that have been hired by interior decorators where they really took in the story of the home and kept that the value of the history of it.
Mellie:Yeah. They care about preserving Yes.
Kierstyn:A historic home. Yes.
Mellie:Then just, like, you know, doing a flip and making it super modern and
Kierstyn:High and quality too. It's not just trying to do it the cheapest way.
Mellie:It's to preserve it in a quality way Yeah. And pass it on Mhmm. Quality. Yes. Yeah.
Mellie:Which we're into. We love quality. We love quality. Craftsmanship. And craftsmanship.
Mellie:It just makes us And when people have the pride of, like, building something or remodeling something, we got to work with Joss for many years and Yes. The care he put into his homes. It wasn't a tire. That's for you, Joss. Yeah.
Mellie:Please come back.
Kierstyn:What are two hidden gems or not so hidden gems
Mellie:in Procter in your opinion? Cafes, restaurants or shopping? Two stores that have been there longer, you know I love Lapis, you know I love Compass Rose, they smell good, they always have really great things to look at, we have a lot of fun there. But two businesses that really are important to me and Proctor are, is the shoe repair guy because you know I love my shoes. Yeah.
Mellie:And he, I have You
Kierstyn:must go in deeper
Mellie:about the shoe repair guy. Love him because I have these pair of heels that I have four pairs of and I wear them like tennis shoes and the straps tend to break off. And a lot of times when I tried to have them repaired before, we just used glue.
Kierstyn:Like you personally? Yes.
Mellie:But he like took apart the shoe to like restructure it to get the strap to stay forever and I was like, that's crazy and that's the kind of workmanship and craftsmanship he has. Yeah. And he's you know, part of Proctor, like he's been there, I don't even know when he's been started, it was a long time ago, I should find out. Yeah, that's a good one. And then the other one is Fine Connections Jewelry.
Kierstyn:You told me about this place.
Mellie:Yes. Yes. They're a small boutique jewelry store that has been there a long time, you know, they might not be as trendy as Lapis and there's but what they have is quality and the service they have there, I went to go sell an old jewelry piece to them and ended up not working out but he did like, he was like if you sell this on marketplace you can meet the person here really cared about my safety and that was, that meant something to me and they have like the coolest vintage pieces so if you want to get like a vintage Rolex I would highly recommend checking out Find Connections or if you just and talk to them like they can find the jewelry you want, they can make jewelry that you want, they have fixed a lot of pieces for me, they've done watch batteries for me, they're really great local jewelry store that I highly recommend and I think a lot of people don't notice them and I hope that most people do because they belong to stay there or that they should be able to stay there forever. Yeah. They're part of Procter.
Kierstyn:I remember you telling me that story about him letting you go and sell your piece of jewelry there And that was really nice to him because he didn't even make any money off of that and he just, out of the kindness, so
Mellie:to start, let you sell in front of
Kierstyn:his business just for safety.
Mellie:And that's kind how we wanna run our businesses, right? Is that like we really want it to be about the people. Yeah. And when you find like minded business owners who care about people and not just their sales, they got a loyal customer out of me.
Kierstyn:Okay. So Proctor and correct me if I'm wrong, Procter has an average home value of around $7.41 ks in 2026. Okay. In your opinion, is it worth it? Absolutely.
Kierstyn:Are you getting for that price that you can't get anywhere else in Tacoma?
Mellie:Yeah, I think it's a combination of many things, right? It's the care of the homes, it's the history of the homes, it's The community. It's the community, it's the sidewalks, it's the trees, it's the location, it's everything.
Kierstyn:So, Proctor's known for being walkable, we just talked about that. But what does it actually mean day to day? Yes. So, like I mentioned,
Mellie:you can walk your kids to school, you can just go for walks and look at all the beautiful houses because it's so beautiful there are sidewalks or you can go to farmers market, you can go get some coffee at Olympia Coffee or maybe even just take a further walk and go to Evening Walk? Yep, and you can even go further and go to Reston and or go down North Slope. So you're kind of centrally located to many other neighborhoods. Yeah. And it just depends how much you like walking and if you want to go for hours, if you want to go for a jog, this is a great place to do it.
Mellie:Yeah, so it could be
Kierstyn:a daily walk, daily biking, or you could just save it for the weekend.
Mellie:Yep. Really it's just whatever you want. Yes.
Kierstyn:A lot of people moving to Proctor are commuting to Seattle. What does that commute look like? In your opinion, is it worth it? And does living in Proctor make that commute harder or easier?
Mellie:I think that's gonna be dependent on each person. This is where like sometimes people ask me like, should I buy this house? And my answer is generally, I will let people know if it's a good investment or you know we'll go over numbers but when it comes to home it's such a personal thing right? Yeah. Like it's lifestyle.
Mellie:Some people don't mind competing. Some people would rather spend 800 here and get a beautiful home, a beautiful neighborhood than maybe spending 800 in Seattle and getting a smaller home, a newer home, and being closer to work, being more townhome in Seattle for that price. Yeah. But because a lot of our historic homes in Procter that are 800 to 1,000,000 or probably are not probably, they are much more when you're in Seattle, Seattle and so you get a lot more house and that might be worth the commute. At the end of the day I can't make that decision for anybody but I think it is, if a lot of people are doing it then it must be worth it, right?
Mellie:Right. And yeah, I also generally tell people when they're shopping and when we markets where there's time to kind of process a little bit more, where we're in right now, is do the drive and see how you like it. I mean, it's not going to be competitive where you're doing it every day, but you know do it during rush hour traffic see how you if that's something that you can sustain for a long time, we always talk about sustainability right? Because when you're excited and you're like, oh I don't care. Yeah we'll do it right now and then after years you're like I am But beat if you're already commuting and you're used to it or if it's just part of the work schedule that you've already budgeted in for a time, it might be worth it.
Mellie:And then we also have a lot of transit now where you can even take the train up.
Kierstyn:There's new development happening in Proctor. Proctor Station, Madison 25, more apartments are proposed. How do you feel about that as someone who knows this neighborhood? Is it a threat to what makes Procter special?
Mellie:I do like about our faces. You could actually keep that. Okay. Because oh, man. That's a hard question.
Mellie:Right? I would probably.
Kierstyn:Start with how do you feel about it? How do you feel about that as someone who knows this neighborhood?
Mellie:Know Madison 25 is nice. I have in the past thought about it.
Kierstyn:What is Madison 25 for someone who doesn't know?
Mellie:It's the apartments above Cactus across from that market. Okay. I think having one is good. Yeah. I don't know if having many is good.
Mellie:A, because they're, you know we are fifteen minutes from the freeway, we don't have main roads and we like walking around the community so if we're liking walking around a quiet community we can't be bringing in buildings where thousands of people or hundreds of people are living in it, are they parking, Yeah. You know maybe they're building a parking garage but then now we're bringing in more traffic and keeping that historic charm of the neighborhood is important. Yeah absolutely. I understand you know urbanized and I know Tacoma has changed a lot of rules on the density and building up and building more within the blocks. So, but you know me, try not to get too political because it strains me.
Mellie:Yeah absolutely. Yeah so that's not usually there's definitely a lot of spearheaded those who spearhead with their courage and their passion to help in these areas. I would say that it's not an area where I generally do a lot of my energy just because it's not my skill set, it's not my passion. And I think that
Kierstyn:To kind of protect the historic vibe of Proctor? Some are you saying, like, some people really devote their career to protecting And
Mellie:I wanna support those people, but I think it's It's very draining for you. It's very draining. If you were to do that, it'd be draining. Yes. At this point.
Mellie:Yeah. Maybe when my kids are older.
Kierstyn:Well, everybody's got their own.
Mellie:Teenage phase by myself. So, like, let me just focus on getting my teenage boys Yes. Yeah. Situated. And then we can circle back to this in a couple of years.
Kierstyn:Last question. Yes. If you could describe Proctor in one sentence, what would it be?
Mellie:Or one word. Community. Community? Okay. It's funny because that word was there immediately, but then I was like, I said it so many times, but I think it's
Kierstyn:up for a reason.
Mellie:Yeah, it really is. It really is community. It really is. There's a couple of pockets of Tacoma that are, you know, similar to that but Proctor for sure is the one that takes the lead to me in what community feels like who can't not fall in love when you're there. Yeah.
Mellie:Right? Awesome.
Kierstyn:So that's Procter. Thank
Mellie:you for listening And again, we would love your feedback. We would love to hear what you would like us to talk about or if you have any questions. And we'll see you on the next one.