I visited the Arlington area for Thanksgiving and liked the Arlington and Alexandria areas. Job wise it would be a good move for me to be in proximity of DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. However, house prices are crazy in these two areas. My criteria of a single family house, 4 bdrms, 2 baths were starting in the 450+K range. I wanted some opinion from you folks about what other cities to do research on in N. Virginia area, like Fairfax, Reston, Annandale, Woodbridge etc I am looking for reasonable house prices, good school district, low crime rate usual things. Please point me to websites that may be of help also.

Help an Upstate NY brother out ....

Your help is much appreciated!

Thanks.

 

You can try looking in the Montgomery County area in Maryland. I grew up there, and the school districts are pretty good.. lower crime rate than most in this area. Mainly in the Rockville/ Potomac area. It's about 15 minutes to DC from Rockville with Metro acccess too. Columbia is an up and growing area. Most places in Nova are really over priced in my opinion.

 

how much commuting do you like to do? to save any kind of $ on a house that big, you'll put it all on your car... and your time.

my .02, suck it up and pay for the location you really want, you'll pay for it anyway. or, rent. i'm torn right now, i need to buy a house just to live in but at these prices i think it's a bad investment.

 

I know my friend ended up buying a single family out in Frederick, MD. Its about an hour out ... but the area seems nice and the home prices were a lot lot cheaper.

In my area, single family homes that are new construction are starting in the low 700s ...

 

Partly depends on what kind of work you want. If you want to work for an IT company that has the Federal Gov't as a client, you want NOVA. If you want to work for the Gov't, you want to be close to DC. If you want medical/biotech, you want MD.

- Jeremy (jnn4v)

 

I agree that Rockville/Potomac, MD is nice, partly since I'm from (and still am in) that area. Montgomery County public schools have a great repuation too. But prices here are crazy. I haven't been keeping up with the real estate prices recently, but I think for $450k, you'll probably only find a nice townhouse in this area.

You can check www.homesdatabase.com for listings...

Jean

 

in the back of your mind...

Va pays tax on auto every year, percentage of assesed value above some base value. it was being phased out and that value rose every year, then they figured out how much they revenue the state was losing and postponed phaseout. percentage varies by county, when i was in Prince William County it was 3.7% above 12k i think.

Md pays a locality tax on income as well as state and federal.

where you work in relation to where you live for drive, i.e. direction of major, travel/lack of travel beltway parking lot, availablilty of train/metro, parking costs, etc. should also be considered.

 

DON'T come to Fairfax County. Not like it's a bad place, but house prices are going to kill you. Welcome to sitting in traffic for an hour or more to go 15 miles!

Good luck!!

 

Reston is a cool area. And so is Chantilly. I lived in Both

 

fairfax county is one of the 'richest' counties in the country. property tax will kill you.


anyways, i recommend checking out prince william county. its adjacent to fairfax county (to the south) BUT the house prices are much cheaper. you can buy some very nice homes for about ~$250-300k. hell, some townhomes in fairfax county cost $300k!!!!!