(MONEY Magazine) – When Nasser Ordoubadi, 33, moved from New York City to Seattle in 1984, he planned to stay only one year to complete his internship at Virginia Mason, one of the city's leading teaching hospitals. But the Emerald City quickly seduced him. Now, five years later, the Tehran-born physician has no intention of leaving. ''Seattle fits with my energies,'' he says. His wife of one year, Kim Sapunar, a 28-year-old California native who works as an urban planner in the city of Bellevue, feels the same way. The couple just bought a four- bedroom house in Kirkland, seven miles northeast of Seattle and a few blocks away from 45-mile-long Lake Washington. ''With all the parks and good schools around here, this is a great place to bring up kids,'' says Sapunar, who hopes to have two children within a few years. For the moment, Ordoubadi is concentrating on building his medical practice and his related entrepreneurial ventures. He divides his six-day-a-week work schedule three ways: as a physician at an urgent-care clinic in Renton and another that he set up in Auburn two years ago, and as the president of Probiologic, a Bellevue company that markets food supplements, in which he , owns a 50% stake. Ordoubadi says it took only $350,000 to get his clinic started, a third of what he would have needed back East. And he likes the reception awarded to start-up owners. ''Local bankers believe in you,'' he says. ''They're not naive, just more trusting.'' As an urban planner, Sapunar heartily applauds Seattle's efforts to permit growth without destroying the area's character. She points to the colors of buildings in the Pike Place Market area downtown, overlooking Elliott Bay. The same pastel shades of peach and blue adorn both the historic structures and the new condo towers. Despite their hectic 60-hour work schedules, the couple block out time to enjoy Seattle's pleasures. ''We love it that you can hop in your car and be in the Cascade Mountains in an hour,'' says Ordoubadi. ''The scenery here is spectacular. It has a freshness that you can't find even in the Alps.'' Ordoubadi has profited nicely from Seattle's recent real estate boom in which some house prices escalated by 20% to 40% last year. Over the past few years, the physician bought and sold two condos and one lot in Kirkland. He netted an average gain of 18%. Fired up by the couple's enthusiasm for Seattle, their relatives have begun making the pilgrimage too. First, Ordoubadi's parents, who fled Iran after the fall of the Shah, moved to a house in nearby Redmond. Then Sapunar's brother Sean, 24, pulled up stakes in Berkeley, Calif. and began living with the couple while working in sales for Probiologic. ''My younger sister Nini is in Manhattan, and we've been working on her,'' jokes Ordoubadi. -- M.T.S.