Seattle spends most of the year inside a long wet season that rarely bothers to become one famous storm. It shows up as drizzle, a low ceiling, and marine air that keeps shingles, siding, and soil damp from the first fall rains until a shorter summer finally dries the city out. Hills tip that water at foundations and at the house downhill. Moss treats a roof like a bed. The mild temperatures fool people. The house is wet for months anyway.
A lot of the stock is wood, and the wet season finds every lazy joint. Craftsman bungalows in Ballard and Wallingford, hillside houses on Queen Anne and in West Seattle, ramblers toward the north end, and narrow new townhouses share blocks where gutters pack with cedar needles and maple seeds. Skylights and tight valleys do the leaking. Crawl spaces stay cool and sour. A hard freeze is not the main plot, yet a bare pipe can still split on the week the air finally drops.
The useful call names a slope and a symptom. Water at a daylight basement, a musty hatch, a furnace that has limped through too many gray winters, a bath fan that drips, rats in an attic, a yard that stays slick because the grade never rests. A view of the Sound does not change the stain on the ceiling. Say whether the house is an old wood place, a rambler, or a new flat-roofed infill, because those fail in different rooms.
If the question is a policy, a deductible, or a claim, have the declarations page close and describe the damage you can see without climbing. If the question is a leak, heat, a nest, or a drain, bring the week it started. Seattle will go back to drizzle whether you are ready or not. Walk the drip line before you dial.
Do not hold out for a dry month that may sit on the far side of the calendar. Name the hill or the flat, name the failure, and pick the trade that matches it. Pick the trade and call.