Millenials Choosing Older Homes Closer In? (Arlington, Newport News: university, median income, living)

[boyd888]

I think a huge factor is traffic. If you could get from PWC to the beltway in 20 minutes no matter the time of day you'd see a lot of younger couples buying big new homes and having no problem with the commute. In reality it can easily take 1+ hours just to get from the edge of the beltway to PWC during rush hour. There are many nice homes in PWC, but the nightmarish commute scratches off that area (and it's generally newer homes) in order to live closer to or even inside the beltway (generally older homes).

So rather than spend two hours a day in their cars they choose a closer home. So I think location is more a primary driver than "choosing" an older home over a newer one. If there were land in nice neighborhoods where you could buy $500K brand new homes with twenty minutes of DC you would see young people (well everyone) snatching them up.

[sutyotsuk]

I think the younger buyers have experienced the high cost of driving from the front lines.....they are the ones driving used cars, breaking down, getting the tickets/accidents/dwis......and a lot of it is in the name of socializing. Experience tells them that convenience is better. However, there will always be the FTB, who just gotta have that new carpet smell; well welcome to Winchester! I'd rather be where the jobs are.

The DC area should go vertical in my opinion. I know about the height restrictions, etc..but Mr. Jefferson, or whomever, probably could not have contemplated land at 1000 Dollars per square foot. The monuments are nice, but Tucson actually has more of a skyline, and it's centerpiece is a Federal Courthouse. GM made them tear up the trolleys in LA, I wonder what happened in DC?

[irvine]

Originally Posted by sutyotsuk

The monuments are nice, but Tucson actually has more of a skyline, and it's centerpiece is a Federal Courthouse. GM made them tear up the trolleys in LA, I wonder what happened in DC?

Congress is to blame in DC. It would've been cheaper at the time (mid 60s) for Capitol Transit to continue running trolleys. You can read about it in "the Great Society Subway," which tells the story of mass transit in DC.

[IndiaLimaDelta]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

I think there is data supporting my POV, but I don't have any handy right now.

Whaaaat???!!! You don't have quotes and data handy to be presented to random strangers on the internet at any given moment? I'm afraid I am going to have to insist on seeing this data.

Shouldn't you see the data for sure ("I think...") and then form POV, instead of having an agenda first and muse about whether there may be data out there to fit the preconceived notion?

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

Similarly I think over the last 30-40 years there has been a learning in "how to transform a place"

Get ready to live in 330 sqft, my fellow Americans!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak

Just imagine what this fella can do with a 7000 sqft NoVA McMansion, let alone a 2000 sq Beltway tear-down.

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

I would have to give the koreans bonus points for being indie/local chain vs national chain (I assume Matin is indie, and Shillas are not found outside NoVa, but I could be wrong)

Yes you could be wrong, indeed. Shilla is a big national/corporate chain in Korea.

For a true indie Korean bakery, check out the new bakery at Lotte near the corner of 28/50. The fillings there beat everyone else in all of NoVA. It's a family run joint started by the same folks who run the handmade dumpling and soondae (Korean haggis) shop in the same building. Oh, wait, never mind. You don't come out to the exurbs.

[jillybean720]

Originally Posted by Carlingtonian

I agree with you in general--but I do think there's a grain of truth in it. Compared to the Boomers, we Xers are supposed to be 1. cynical, due to our parents' divorces; 2. in constant need of praise; and 3. insistent on work-life balance. Obviously, generalizations only go so far with huge groups of people, but there probably is a stronger pattern with all those things among Xers than other generations.

heh, I'm all of those things I was born in 1982, so whatever "generation" I am, I'll claim those same traits! I never shared a room growing up (only one sibling), but I started college in a shared dorm followed by an on-campus apartment of 6 girls in 2 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, so I'm not sure where these fabulous new spacious campus dwellings are, but they sure weren't on my campus in 2000-2003. Through high school and college, I worked retail, restaurant, self storage facility, movie theater...certainly nothing particularly glamorous. So, lots of interesting assumptions/generalizations here in this thread about my peer group.

I love living in Sterling, but I would HATE it if I worked in DC. I lived in Woodbridge before and hated that even though I was only commuting to Merrifield and still not into DC. I totally get wanting to live closer in.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta

It's a family run joint started by the same folks who run the handmade dumpling and soondae (Korean haggis) shop in the same building. Oh, wait, never mind. You don't come out to the exurbs.

I come out to the exurbs when life takes me there. But it doesn't do so that often. I'm not so hostile to chains to want to drive out to the exurbs to avoid Shilla's and I live close to Breeze, so I dont think indie Korean bakeries provides me with a big motive to travel out there.

As for 330sq foot apts, thats something that will work for some people and I think should be legal in select areas. But the learning how to transform areas is largely driven by people looking to avoid such tight quarters - people transforming places like Trinidad or ParkView or historic Anacostia, because prices in places like DuPont Circle are high enough to motivate micro units.

[JD984]

The intersection of Routes 28 and 50 is in Chantilly. I'm not sure I'd even describe that as the "exurbs" given how many jobs are located nearby.

As for Shilla's, it seems that there are 4-5 Shilla's in the United States, all in the DC metro region. Is it clear they are affiliated with the Shilla's in Korea? I have read articles about the woman who opened the Annandale store, and they weren't written as if she were a franchisee. Perhaps she wanted to capitalize on the name recognition. Or maybe they are related to the Korean chain, which would not discourage me from patronizing them simply because someone has decided that another place out towards Dulles is better.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by sutyotsuk

The DC area should go vertical in my opinion. I know about the height restrictions, etc..but Mr. Jefferson, or whomever, probably could not have contemplated land at 1000 Dollars per square foot.

It was a reaction to building the Cairo Apartments.

There is a proposal to reexamine the height limits, made by Rep. Darrel Issa, that notorious Liberal Urbanist Hipster.

[FC Merrifield]

Originally Posted by JEB77

The intersection of Routes 28 and 50 is in Chantilly. I'm not sure I'd even describe that as the "exurbs" given how many jobs are located nearby.

As for Shilla's, it seems that there are 4-5 Shilla's in the United States, all in the DC metro region. Is it clear they are affiliated with the Shilla's in Korea? I have read articles about the woman who opened the Annandale store, and they weren't written as if she were a franchisee. Perhaps she wanted to capitalize on the name recognition. Or maybe they are related to the Korean chain, which would not discourage me from patronizing them simply because someone has decided that another place out towards Dulles is better.

Shilla is a pretty common name for Korean businesses because it's the name of one of the three kingdoms that predated Korea (also the one that ended up defeating the other two kingdoms and hence probably the most popular). I don't know this for sure, but I doubt that the U.S. Shillas are the same as the Shillas in Korea.

Re: Chantilly. Does the fact that there are a lot of jobs nearby negate the long distance from the city? For example, many factories or animal farms, etc. are located in non-suburban areas and yet provide thousands of jobs. I don't know the answer, but to me, the suburbs of DC would generally include areas that are within a few miles (maybe 5 or so) of the beltway. I drive out to Chantilly fairly often and while it has some suburban features, it's just so far away.

[brooklynborndad]

I think the term exurbs is historically a name for towns in greater NY and greater Boston that had been historic small towns, had commuter rail service and by the late 1950s, 1960s attracted a group of very affluent long distance commuters - I believe thet term was popularized by this book The Exurbanites: A. C. Spectorsky: Amazon.com: Books The places are treated in fiction in books like this Amazon.com: Couples: A Novel (9780449911907): John Updike: Books


Neither really applies to areas around here so much, where there were few historic towns, no commuter rail until quite recently, and where they were built initially mostly for (not particularly affluent) commuters to the inner suburbs rather than to the center city - and where there is now considerable employment.

I prefer the terms outer suburbs, though I know what people mean when they say exurbs around here.

To some degree we are jurisdiction focused here, and so while Loudoun or PWC are outer suburbs, its hard to see Chantilly in FFX county as being so - though I guess in geography it is. Just as some parts of FFX are inner suburbs, though they are not in the inner jurisdictions.

There are some areas -Vienna, Burke, etc, etc that are really in between but 'middle suburbs" somehow seems awkward.