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Intro/Where would you live?
Good afternoon all! I intro'd myself on the DC Babies board yesterday but wanted to say hi here as well. I'm Jen, 32, live in Montgomery County (since 2008, from NJ), married almost 2 years (working on baby #1 for half that time), and totally controlled by my 2 maniac dogs. = )
I know this game gets played a lot around here, so I thought I would get some insight from you guys since I can't make a decision to save my life on this front. DH and I are thinking about buying townhouse/SFH at some point in the who-knows-when future and I have no clue where I want to grow roots. Every few months, I change my mind. Right now, DH is all over the place (I mean literally - we live in MoCo, he works in Frederick, goes to school at night in Baltimore), while I work 2 miles away from home. There's a good possibility that he'll end up working in Alexandria within the next 6 months.
So, if we pretend that he works in Alexandria (and school is over) and I work in Rockville, where would you want to live to make life not so horrible for commuting? I work from home twice a week, so I feel like I can suck up the rougher commute. I don't know what our exact budget is/will be (almost 4 years here and I still have sticker shock), but good schools and a yard (even a small one for these little crazies) are top priorities. TIA for playing. = )
Re: Intro/Where would you live?
Welcome! I think price makes a big difference with your question, and if you want to stay in MD or would move to VA.
If you could afford it and want to stay in MoCo, I would look in Bethesda/Chevy Chase. You'd be able to get to Rockville pretty quickly on the metro, and your DH could metro or get on the Beltway easily. I know nothing about VA neighborhoods and what might be good.
TTC #2: BFP 12/17/11, m/c 1/7/12 and D&C 1/12/12
baby blog/cooking blog
I'd think about whether you want to "split the difference" and live somewhere where you'd each have a 30 minute commute, or live closer to one of your jobs and have the other person suck it up and commute farther. I used to commute between Alexandria and Rockville, and it wasn't *that* bad (45 minutes-1 hour), although I didn't have kids then. Kids change things, because you have to deal with things like daycare hours, but it could still work.
If you want to live in-between, I'd look at McLean, Tysons, and parts of Arlington close to the Beltway or the GW Parkway. The negative is those areas are pretty expensive. I think you can get more house for your money close to Rockville, but then your husband will have the long commute.
I'm assuming a driving commute. If one or both of you wants to Metro, then you have even more things to consider.
Thanks ladies! I feel like anywhere we look is going to be uber expensive, which is why I am a commitment-phobe when it comes to thinking about this kind of stuff. Right now, we're on the Rockville/Gaithersburg border and I do like this area but I'm trying to be open to other options. Both in Va and Md. If only I could hit the lottery... And Dh and I will both have car commutes, which is why I want to minimize the pain. Although he says he'll live anywhere and doesn't care about his commute but this is because he isn't prepared for the reality of children thrown into the morning routine. = )
When we decided to buy, we basically looked at the entire western half of the DC Metro area in VA and MD, including Alexandria City, sections of Arlington near the northern part of the GW Parkway, McLean, Rockville, Potomac, Silver Spring, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Derwood, and Olney. Because DH works in DC, we wanted Metro to be an option for him, so that limited things somewhat. Eventually we ruled out the farther-out towns in Maryland, because DH's commute to DC would've been too long, and if I ended up taking a job in DC in the future, we'd both have long commutes. Some areas ended up being too expensive for the type of house we wanted (Bethesda and Arlington in particular). After a lot of looking, we narrowed it down to a few very specific neighborhoods that we liked, and we focused our searches there. At the end, we were focusing on Alexandria City and Silver Spring. I think I would've been happy in either location, but now I'm glad we bought in Maryland so my commute isn't so bad.
Good luck!
This is really helpful - thank you for sharing your approach, whines! I'm also considering the entire western half of the metro area so I'm glad I'm not the only one who started out this way. And of course, once we see what we can afford and what our money will actually buy, the decision will likely be narrowed down drastically for us. At one point we were considering moving to Frederick County since housing prices are more affordable, but I just don't want to move that far outside the city. Not to mention I think DH is nuts to consider a commute to Alexandria from there (I feel like it's a hell of a commute from where we are now).
I can tell I have a lot of homework (no pun intended) in my future! = )