When I told editorial director Ken Robinson I was doing a story on affordable housing in Highline (see page 1), he suggested it would be fun to check on what my former residences are worth now.

Zillow.com is a Seattle-based web site that allows you to enter a house address and see a free estimate of its value.

My house hopping days happened 20 to 30 years ago around West Seattle.

Nowadays, the West Seattle housing market, fueled by free-spending yuppies, is hot, hot, hot.

But back then my neighbors in interior West Seattle seemed mostly to be young couples planning their escape to the suburbs and older couples who had never gotten out.

I started playing house in rentals about a year after college.

The first one was a tiny four-room rental with wild cats in the crawl space on a dead end street near South Seattle Community College. Rent was $90 per month. Zillow estimates the four bedroom home that replaced it is worth $409,000.

We moved up to an 850-square-foot rental with a slanting living room on the non-water-view hillside near Holy Rosary School.

The house has been fixed up but the footprint is the same. Then, we mailed a $125 monthly rental check. Now, Zillow says, it's worth $450.786.

With a toddler who couldn't keep sleeping in his parents' bedroom forever, we decided to take the scary plunge into home ownership.

But $35,000 seemed like a pretty steep plunge for a "war box" in the valley west of the Junction.

The style was typical of the small square homes built in West Seattle after World War II.

The house looks about the same now, but I assume they have solved the terrible mildew problem because Zillow estimates it's worth $360,000.

We decided to move one final time, to what I dubbed the suburbs of White Center.

Our 2,000 square foot Arbor Heights rambler was, frankly, kind of boring but both sons got their own bedroom.

The $77,000 purchase price doubled what we paid for our starter home. But this was the homestead our grownup sons and grandkids would come back to on holidays.

But the house turned out to be, if not haunted, at least cursed.

Within two years, three cats and our marriage died there.

She sold the house at a loss. Zillow estimates it's currently worth $455,273.

Moving back to rentals, I found a great old waterfront house on Beach Drive with Marge. It actually was for sale but they rented it to us on a month-to-month basis for $700 per month.

Our back yard expanded and contracted twice a day with the tides. Freighters, aircraft carriers and Christmas ships floated by.

Potential buyers visited periodically to look through the house. We didn't greet them with fresh baked bread from the oven or newly picked fragrant flowers in vases.

We mentioned the ants in the basement and listed potential reconstruction projects.

But finally, a guy responded that he would live in a tent in the yard during remodeling if he could be lucky enough to own the home.

We thought about buying it ourselves.

The $160,000 asking price, although once again double what I had paid for my previous house, was not too outrageous. We both had decent paying jobs.

But I was starting over and had no extra cash or energy.

We passed.

And now Zillow estimates it is worth-ah, could you give me just a moment?

Zillow says-would you hand me that box of tissues?

Thank you, I feel better now.

Zillow values the house at $1.06 million.

Well, Ken, "zillowing" my former homes certainly was interesting, but not entirely fun.

Eric Mathison can be reached at hteditor@robinsonnews.com or 206-388-1855.