Move to DC, work at Pentagon, where to live?
 

So, I've got a buddy moving to DC early-summer. He wants to buy a house, 4-br, move-in-ready, $400k-$450k. Looking for minimum commute, ie very close to metro, upper-middle-class white guy neighborhood... yards and garages, suburbia'ish.

Somebody school me on the DC housing situation since I'm up for orders in under a year and although first choice will be Virginia Beach, I know I'll be at least offered/asked for the Pentagon.

Nova: between route 28 and 495, preferably above route 50.


anything else is the wrong answer.




an is he actually working in DC? because many outsiders say DC and they mean like sterling VA or something, move to DC and have to commute into VA from DC cause they are noob.

if he's working at the actual pentagon, then the further he lives from it, the longer the commute. the 400k burbs are probably a 30-40 minute commute. The 500-600k burbs are half that.

he might be able to find something inside the beltway in a random hood that isn't too bad. there are some borderline "meh" neighborhoods like Pimmit Hills that are cheap and not far out but they are basically more trashy than idlyllic.

http://www.redfin.com/homes-for-sale...ion_type=6&v=6

Honestly if he wants a quick commute he needs to live right off 95 and slug to the Pentagon. I lived in Prince William County near 95 for most of my teenage years. My dad and a few other guys I know who all worked in the Pentagon would slug in every day and the slug home.

He'll be working AT the Pentagon. He says everybody he's ever talked to that hated living in DC was because of the commute. Guys who had short rides on the Metro or otherwise short stints to work had way better lives across the board.

What are his sub $500k options in the pink area. We're checking the various online real-estate programs now... but are there any specific neighborhoods that are deals AND near the metro in the pink area?

And no, pink doesn't mean he's looking for major fag hang-outs. Wife, kids, minivan!
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...6&d=1328550006

this image shows houses between 400-500K, have at least 1 bedroom and 1 bath and a garage...notice the sparseness inside the beltway.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...&d=1328550478p

Most things below 50 are old. the further west you go, the newer nicer you get.

The houses around the Fair Lakes area have tons of stuff around them, shops and restaurants. Built anywhere between 1985-2000.

The houses around the Centreville area have tons of stuff around them, shops and restaurants. Built anywhere between 1990-2000. Further commute, that's where my parent's house was that you visited that one time.

The houses around the Okaton area have less stuff around them, limited groceries and stores. Built anywhere between 1960-1980. More rural.

The houses around the Mantua area have less stuff around them, limited groceries and stores. Built anywhere between 1960-1975. More rural.

The houses around the Annandale area have stuff around them. Built anywhere between 1955-1975. less rural but sitll spotty and limited shopping, older areas for stores.

The houses around the Wes Falls church area have stuff around them. Built anywhere between 1955-1975. limited shopping, older areas for stores.


There's no Walmart or Lowes or any bigger stores inside the beltway. There's a trashy Home Depot and shitty Target.


As you can even see on the available houses, those around the 28 area are cheaper and larger and have much more access to stuff. the airport is there and there's tons of shopping centers and movie theathers and crap like walmart and best buy and lowes and things of that nature.


I live inside the beltway where you see lee hwy on the map between falls church and arlington. I'm planning a trip out to fair lakes this weekend to go to walmart...it's 25 miles away. I think the extra communte time is worth the larger yards, basements, garages, and access the stuff vs the proximity to DC. but that's my opinion.

if you remove garage from the options the green houses fill up inside the beltway more, but the sq. footage is reduced.

He does not want to be west of the Pentagon, he wants to be south of it. I will get my dad's Realtor info for the area tonight and PM it to you. He has helped us with several houses in the NoVA area.

south sucks

It does not fit the "upper-middle-class white guy neighborhood" requirement. yes, read into that.

I get no respect.

Anyway... the metro runs across the top and right side of your pink circle of homos. I mean homes. I live in the gap between the orange freeway dip and the top of the pink circle above the word "WANTS" and I'm about a 15 min walk to metro. My house was 520k. I have no garage but I have a yard. I also have awesome beers within a block of me. That was the clincher. We also only have about 1000 square feet. There are bigger houses near by but they cost bigger money.

Living near a metro stop costs a lot. Because there is a metro stop.

HOWEVER

There are new metro stops going in to the west of West Falls Church that might entice this dude--they go as far as Reston (along 267) through Tyson's Corner.

To be completed sometime 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_...shington_Metro)

I'm just a snob. I've lived in this area my entire life and know what's nice (Centreville/Chantilly). I've also lived in Courthouse & S. Arlington (near Shirlington) and N. Arlington near you y8s...as you know :)

I've also worked in alexandria and have been exposed to the entire map that Sam posted.

I personally miss the Centreville area. There are things I don't like about it, traffic being one. It's also being overrun by all the crazy amounts of town home developments. The plus is the nicer shopping centers and aboundance of goodness around. The further west you go the bigger/better/cheaper the neighborhoods get (with some exception) as well as the schools are better. Plus there's 4 pizza places I'll eat out west, and I can't stand the pizza in our area. There's any store you want to travel to easily, and you're in close proximity to the Dulles Town Center and Fair Oaks Mall, where my current option is Tysons, where I only go to the mall 30 minutes before it closes.

Everything is so limited within the beltway and everything is old; all the shopping centers suck; everything below 50 is chain link fences--if you catch my drift. And there's nothing new ever going in, when it does it just happens in one of the brown/shingled 70s looking run-down shopping areas full of people that sit around with no job. (next time I go to Einstein Bagel's I'll take a picture of exactly this). What's the newest thing we got? I mini-BJ's?! I don't shop at BJ's it does me no good. The Target here never has anything on the racks, and I hate the shopping center it's in, and the two walmarts are over 25 miles away.

Alexandria has nice neighborhoods in it, but you gotta deal with the filth around it.

I hate going to stores in this area, they are sparse and full of interesting fellows. I have to specifically shop on fridays so I cna find a parking space. I go a store out of the way from me (route 7) because Harris Teeter is overpriced, safeway is disgusting, the other safeway down Lee is too small and never has anything, the giant by BGR and Italian Store is way too small, the giant in bailey's crossroads is nice and new and renovated buy in a horrible shopping center where no one speaks english...same goes with the safeway on patrick henry. I HATE IT.

Tysons area is constantly under construction and overrun.

Mclean is nice but there's nothing to it but million dollar houses. Bailey's Crossroads area is filth and disgusting, 7 corners aint much better.

While Shirlington itself is nice, I wouldn't want ot live there again just to be close to a nice strip of restaurants. The rest of the area sucks and is full of questionableness.

If you wanna live south of the pentagon, you'd be wanting to move all the way south to woodbridge or something...then you at least start to get back into real neighborhoods with real shopping centers around.

Must things south of 50 are trashy. Burke and Fairfax station have nice neighborhoods but then there's nothing around.


I can't wait to move out west :)

Everything I know about DC:

-The subway sucks, too many people. I would absolutely not commute via the subway.
-When I was 5 or 6 my parents took us to DC, on the way in I saw a man standing in the middle of the interstate, urinating.

^ nutshell

Nope, no houses near metro.
Basically as y8s said, he could try buying a place where future metro will be (i.e. along highway 66).

But it would still mean living and commuting on 66 which is like, all circles of hell combined into a single experience.

edit: 2 weeks ago I bought a 1900 sq. ft 2 car garage house right above the "SEZ" in the "brian sez live here" picture, for $290k. doesn't need anything.

The subway is one of the best in the nation. It's fcuking CLEAN compared to the dirty piss-smelling ones in other cities. I challenge anyone to find graffitti on Metro. Also it's super cheap. You'd spend 3x as much on BART in SF.


You mean 66 inside the beltway and 267 outside the beltway.

There's a reason I live in columbia MD. Then again I go all over the DC area including nova, md, and DC which is why I need a 600hp daily driver twin disc ceramic clutch miata.

DAMN y9s you baller 500K for 1000sq ft?

When I went to the pentagon last month to defenstrate the joint chiefs (serious) I actually um took the metro from greenbelt.

It'd be funny if vipor or me got stationed guarding some important people/place and ended up shooting you.
Did you manage to defenestrate any joint chiefs?

Also, I don't think your allowed to have a handgun in DC, which means I would not live in DC. Just something to think about.

I would be hanging with the people you'd be guarding... :fawk:

Wait what? What do you mean by "defenestrate" then?

My formative years were spent living 4 blocks from White Oaks Elementary in Burke. It was a stellar place to be a 5th grader. The schools are excellent and there are tons of awesome historical things to see/ do when you have a personal cheauffer/ mom to tote your ass all over the disparate ends of hell and creation to get to them all. We lived in a great neighborhood surrounded by great neighborhoods with a passable Safeway two block away and a bitchin neighborhood pool complete with shady ice cream trucks in the summer.

It was a miserable place for my older brother to be a 12th grader, as it was a 45 minute drive to find anything worth doing (other than smoking weed and trying to make single mothers, that is), and there were more than enough opportunities for an enterprising 18 year old to get himself into deeper and deeper sorts of trouble.

My house is pretty much at the extreme lower right corner of where Brain sez 2 liv. Just inside the beltway in a neighborhood off Gallows Rd. 4 br 2.5 ba, the main 2 floors are 1800 sq ft plus it has a finished basement, so 2600-2700 sq ft if you count that. Typical colonial, five four and a door built in 1979. Attached 2-car garage, lot is about 1/3 acre, cost $480K-ish to buy it in short sale in 2008, and I believe comps down the street have sold in the $500-525K range lately. It's what I'd call middle-class suburbia. Houses in neighborhoods that I would call "upper-middle-class," the kind you can get for $400K elsewhere in the country, are $750K+ in NoVA.

If you need to stay strict to that $400-450K, you're going to have to sacrifice a bedroom or two, or the garage, or live in a lesser quality neighborhood or in a townhouse if you want to be inside the beltway and/or near metro. There are a bunch of houses built in the 1960s that are in good locations, but tend to be smaller and have carports instead of garages. My requirement that it have a real garage and be in our price range made our house search take a few months longer than it otherwise would have. We started looking in February and closed in August. :D

Commuting to the Pentagon limits your options unless you enjoy spending your life in your car. I-66 has all-lanes HOV restrictions inbound in the a.m. and outbound in the p.m., so I guess that leaves GW Pkwy, I-395 regular lanes, or metro. If I had to get to the Pentagon from my place it would be a 10 min drive to Dunn Loring metro stop, 5 min to catch a train, 15 min to Rosslyn, 3-4 minutes to transfer to blue, 4 min to go 2 stops to Pentagon. Probably 40-45 min door-to-door including walking time. I have a friend who works at the Pentagon (civilian, accountant type in the Navy comptroller's office) and lives in Burke. I assume he takes Braddock Rd to 495 to the 395 regular lanes, I can ask how long that drive takes.

The western portion of Brain's boxed area is going to be a nightmare for commuting. I-66 is liable to be a cluster ---- at any time, for any reason, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. If you live any farther than 5-10 min from the farthest stop out on the orange line (Vienna/Fairfax-GMU) and have to commute into DC you will hate your life 5 days a week. Houses up near Tyson's Corner or Wolf Trap are not even remotely in the given budget. You have to go out to Reston or farther before prices start falling, and for someone moving there now that leaves no commute options. Metro silver line out 267... your trusty transportation planners say 2013? I'll believe that when I see it.

I agree that the west side of the beltway is far preferable to the south, within a reasonable commute anyway. We didn't even look down that way because I work up in Bethesda.

With $450K you could literally move to Ky and buy a small mansion in the best school district in the state. You can buy a 3 br, 2-2.5 bath two story w/ a garage & big basement on an acre of land, in the best school district, in the historical part of town, ~20 minutes from Louisville for under $175K.

then you could get a job making $35,000 a year and still not be able to afford it!

----

But yes, there's a reason I currently live where I do--the traffic. Going against traffic is awesome, but between 5:30-7pm is still a disater no matter where you are. Luckily my drive to work is about 10-15min in traffic.

My wife used to cummute to DC, just across the washington bridge off 12th street SW. This is a 5 mile drive and could take close to 1 hour, but it still beats the metro.

The main thing to try to do is avoid the highways. I used to drive from N alrington Duke street and it was easy driving N/S on small streets. Even now I drive E/W paralling 66 without a hitch.

[img]https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...6&d=1328550006[/img]

In the area marked "buddy wants to live here," is where I spend most of my time. I'm still not confortable in this area. It's all a bit run down, the area around Biley's Crossroads is a cultural mind-f. Honestly, if you look up schools north and south of route 50 in that area, you'll see why I stay live above 50. It's like the Mason Dixon line of Arlington/Falls Church.

Also I probably wouldn't live above 267, the communte would get out of hand too far north, and I don't think there would be issue down in the Burke area. Keep in mind this is all relative.

And don't get me wrong, there's plenty of nice stuff around, I'm just jaded. I've lived in the area since 2005 and I've grown tired of it--I'm not used to it, I've lived in big planned neighborhoods my whole life. We moved here specifically so it was easy access to DC while my wife worked there. She since got a job outside the beltway, along with me, so we plan to move outside the beltway as well and deal with traffic. I might begin to start listening to books on CD again...so that's a bonus for me :)

I also used to live right where you see "50" in the little route symbol above Arlington. That's a pretty cool area. Very modern and upscale...but there's no houses that will meet his criteria there, and the atmosphere is urban. I head out that way a lot for a few food places and some shopping, but its a PITA to find parking and it's crowded because it's the only place in arlington to do anything and everything is smaller in scale due to the limits of building.

But I think the main dissapointment inside the beltway is the older homes--a lot of the neighborhoods our nince (like mine and y8s') but it's rare to find a garage. The ones with, tend to be single car ranch style split-level houses, and tend to be in questionable neighborhoods. Even if you do find one, you'll be priced out of the market, or not happy with the surrounding shopping areas.

If he looked in the Vienna/Idylwood area, I'm sure he could find something and the commute wouldn't be bad whatsoever, I was looking up there even my wife were to stay in DC. Also the area Scottfw says he lives...you can cut through annadale road to 50 from his house and make good time to the Pentagon.

The area down by Duke St./Annadale might have good prospects as well, and Duke street has a bit more to offer...but keep in mind it's a mix of commerical and industrial area with again, tons and tons of culture mixed in... ie. chain link fences and businesses in forgien languages.

Sam,
is your friend hip/nightlife or is he burbsy/homebody? does he give a F about good entertainment prospects and culture or more about having a home depot and cheap supermarket near by?

I also dont enjoy all the power lines inside the beltway. I'm a buried power lines neighorbhood kinda guy...it can be a deal breaker.

If the guy is looking for a move-in ready 4 BR and a garage in suburbia that most likely means he has kids already, so he has no real night life during the week. Most likely, his definition of excitement is when the kids go to a sleepover party at their friend's house and his wife permits them to have "loud sex" in his own bedroom. Traffic on weekends isn't really an issue so you can live wherever and still drive to whatever entertainment you want.

Only about the southwestern half of that pink circle will have houses with garages in that budget. Neighborhood quality can vary greatly within a short distance and there are a whole lot of places in there that I would not live, but the houses with garages tend to be in the more decent areas. They also tend to be more towards $500-525K than $450K.

That's what I meant. I don't drive on highways, other than to get to merry-land.
Route 7/Georgetown pike FTMFW.

In my hood they're buried, but betwixt me and the substation is a neighborhood with overhead lines and residents who are too stupid or lazy to trim their trees. The reason I haven't had any power outages lately is because we haven't gotten any serious snow this year.

But I feel you on the aesthetics. In large part it comes down to living inside the beltway and having to look at power lines, or living farther west and having to stare at brake lights on I-66 for 2-3 hours a day.

basically.

Or live south, and slug up and deal with neither of those issues.

Woodbridge/Lorton.

I had some coworkers that came from that area when I worked in Alexandria just off 95, I could see it form my office and the exit/on ramp was right in our development area.

They constantly complained and were always coming in late. It was completely inconsistent...but that's all I know about it. I hate traveling on 495 and 95. I know 395 S is completely stop dead when I'd take it north in the afternoons around 4-5:00pm.

Did they slug or try to drive them-selfs in every day. If you are not slugging, you are doing it wrong.

My buddy just explained what "slugging" is... sounds like a good way to end up sitting next to this guy:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1328643558

I don't understand how picking up strangers would help your commute go faster/safer.

I do know two of them drove in together more often than not because they lived in the same neighborhood.

I don't think I have ever heard of anyone having a bad experience slugging. My dad did it for 3+ years and my friends dad has done it for at least a dozen. They all speak very highly of it.