Moving from Boston to Virginia (Arlington, Alexandria: condos, townhouses, neighborhoods)

[movetovirginia]

Hello,

We are planning on moving from Boston to Northern Virginia. My husband will be working to Arlington and I will be working in DC. We are looking to buy a singlefamily home/ townhouse in the $600K price range. Our priorities are a commute of not more than 1 hour (preferably using public transportation), a newer house and a good school district. Any help in identifying the areas that we should look into is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[claremarie]

If you want to use public transportation, you'll need to look along the Metro lines. The Orange line starts in Vienna, with multiple stops in Arlington, and runs through D.C. You might be able to find a home within walking distance of a stop, but more likely you'll have to drive there. Most single-family houses in this area in your price range will be at least 30-40 years old. There are some brand-new townhouse developments near the Vienna, East Falls Church, West Falls Church, and Dunn Loring stops, which might actually be more than $600K, but a good supply of newer (10-20 years) townhouses that would be in your price range. I-66 runs right along the subway line, but it is a very congested road that is restricted to carpools only during rush hour.
You will pay a premium to live within easy range of Metro. If you're willing to drive to work, you could look in Reston, which is a "planned community" with lots of townhouses and some single-family houses in your price range. There are also LOTS of new townhouses in the Tyson's Corner area, but that area seems to be geared towards young professionals and empty nesters, with not as many families. And the traffic can be a nightmare.

[dullnboring]

If you're willing to live a 5-10 minute drive from a Metro station, your price range can pretty much get you a townhouse anywhere. As Claremarie said, generally the townhouses and condos that lie right next to Metro stations, within walking distance are very high-priced, but just another mile or two down the road, you can find them for hundreds of thousands dollars less. While there are single family homes in that price range within a short distance from Metro stations (particularly around Springfield), they're generally not newer models.

As far as schools go, it's pretty hard to go wrong in Northern Virginia, The public schools in Arlington, Fairfax County and Alexandria are generally very good. There's a handful of underperforming schools that I'd advise to avoid, but even these schools aren't horrific and I think if you live near Metro (at least on the Orange Line), you wouldn't be zoned into any of them.

[claremarie]

Woodbridge is a LOT further out, especially from DC, and not easily accessible by public transportation. The reason that you get "much more house" is that you will spend hours in the car every day, dealing with the regular traffic jams on I-95.

[saganista]

To get perhaps ridiculoulsy specific, you might take a look at the Dunn Loring, Dunn Loring Woods, and Stonewall Manor neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are single-family homes tucked in between Vienna and Falls Church, and major parts of them are within a ten to twelve-minute walk of the Dunn Loring Metro station. There is also regular bus service, and for the $3.75 per day parking fee, you could always just do the 4-minute drive and park in the Metro parking lot, or if it's full (as in after 8:00 am), in the commercial lot across the street for $4.00. There is a place on the market right now in fact at 8116 Bright Meadows Lane in Dunn Loring. They're asking $685K but zillow.com has it at $615K, and in this market, they'll likely come down from that higher figure. You might be able to get an idea of what it looks like by going here...



1800 sq ft plus a full finished basement on an 18,000 sq ft lot. 4 BR 2.5 Baths. Living Rm, Dining Rm, Rec Rm, Family Rm, Laundry Rm, 2-car Garage, blah, blah, blah. Just to give you an idea of what you could get for the money if you looked around some. Metro travel times from Dunn Loring to Arlington would be 12-20 minutes (depending on where in Arlington)...to Downtown, 25 minutes for the White House area and 40 minutes for Capitol Hill. School tree for these areas is typically Stenwood ES (next door to the Metro station), Thoreau MS, and Marshall HS. The first two are fine. You'd rather be in the Madison tree than Marshall, but it's not really that big a deal.