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Hi,
Thinking about relocation to DC area.
Can folks recommend a suburb with good schools (8-10) within 1 hour commute to DC?
Also looking to buy a house within $550K budget. Does such place exist?
On the MD side, certain parts of Rockville or Silver Spring may fit that criteria. I live now near the Aspen Hill area and you can get nice family homes in the 400-500s (not as nice ones in the 300s). My commute door to door is about an hour to an hour 15 mins depending on how metro behaves (and I work by l'enfant which is a long haul that involves switching trains).
The schools are overall good. Elementary school is an 8 (was a 9 last year), middle school 8, though the high school (rockville high) has recently dropped to 5. Those greatschool ratings can be misleading and don't necessarily mean the school is bad if it's below some test score threshold. Also Montgomery County has a lot of magnet programs within high schools with lower ratings.
A lot of open questions there. Where in DC do you work? The commute times can vary quite a bit depending on what time you're willing to get on the road (earlier, the better generally speaking) and whether you'd be commuting to say Georgetown, Dupont Circle or Capitol Hill. Also, it depends on whether you're looking for a single family house, townhouse, etc. and what size, condition or age of house you're willing to look into. Northern Virginia has some good choices but for a bit over $500K you'd probably be limited to smaller older houses for the closer in, more expensive areas with more highly rated schools (I'm assuming you're using greatschools.org rating guides). West Springfield High School is listed as an 8 there (slightly surprising to me) and the neighborhoods around there are probably within your budget for smaller, older homes. It's usually within an hour or so of downtown DC if you're on the road by 6:30 to 7:00 AM. WT Woodson's another nearby high school with generally strong test scores and a similar housing stock and demographic profile in its range (immediately south of Fairfax City).
Do you or your spouse have a job already lined up? If so, what's the EXACT location, since what may look like just a couple of miles distance on a map, can actually make a huge difference in commuting time, given the really extreme traffic of our metro area.
Hi,
Thinking about relocation to DC area.
Can folks recommend a suburb with good schools (8-10) within 1 hour commute to DC?
Also looking to buy a house within $550K budget. Does such place exist?
Check out Burke VA in Fairfax County. It's a very well-established community that's extremely family-friendly with good schools and reasonable proximity to most of the DC employers. The VRE (Virginia Railway Express) train has two stations in Burke and connects with the DC metro in DC at both L'Enfant Plaza and Union Station, and takes 30-45 minutes depending upon station.
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