Asking advice for where in VA to explore over the next 2 months (Arlington: real estate market, apartment)

[dragonryder]

Hello everyone,

This is my first time posting in the Virginia boards and I've just spent a good hour exploring some of the current posts. For the next 3-4+ weekends, we will be exploring Virginia and would love some recommendations on where would best fit our needs for a possible relocation.

We are quite exhausted when it comes to moving. Over the past 20 years, we've lived in Thousand Oaks (CA), Nice (France), London (UK), Parker and Castle Rock (CO), Houston (TX), and Vancouver (WA) (and prior to getting married, my husband lived in Boston (MA) where he said he could never do the winters again!). Living in different places has been a great experience and has really helped us broaden our horizons and understand and reprioritize what we need to be happy and what we don't. We have both worked from home over the past 10 years and my husband recently accepted a new position which was going to be in Raleigh (NC), but it happily turned out that he was able to continue being a virtual employee. That gives us back the living flexibility. But we had already relocated ourselves to Cary, NC before that turn of events and are temporarily in an apartment. We originally thought we were going to settle down in Vancouver and had bought a home, but now that we are out on the Eastern coast, may may just decide to stay here.

Being in Cary, NC is an interesting experience with pluses and minuses. Our goal is to explore the triangle area and to also drive up and explore different towns in Virginia on our weekends. We will then decide where to purchase our next home before the end of the year. Could I please ask for your help in understanding where we should focus our search on? What is very important to both of us includes:

1. Living in an area that is fairly affluent. Our home budget is 700-800K. A little land (0.75 acres+) if possible.
2. Low crime. This is very important to me. I don't want to worry about walking our dogs at night, or if I forgot to lock my front door or car door.
3. A great gym and yoga studio within 15-20 mins. We didn't realize how important this would be to us until we moved to North Vancouver in Washington and had neither worth writing home about. I'm a sucker for Lifetime Fitness which I hope doesn't make people think I'm a snob, but it's just such an awesome gym and I can go swimming 24/7! Very cool :-)
4. Being around 10 mins of foods stores, gas, and modern conveniences. Access to health food stores and organic foods is very important to us.
5. Culture being within an hour or two (art museums/exhibitions, plays, theatre) - I'm so excited about the possibility of being so close to world-class culture in DC. I just got back from seeing Hokusai in Boston and having such exhibitions be within driving distance would be SO great.
6. We're both very much into outdoors - love rollerblading, biking, hiking, long walks and hikes with our pup.
7. We are not city people, but like being close (living 35 mins from downtown Portland was perfect - far enough away to be in the "country" but easy to get to all major shopping).
8. No kids - no worries about schools, etc.
9. I've been through 2 major quakes in LA so natural disasters are not alien to me and definitely no fun, but knowing that I'd like to avoid being in hurricane/tornado prone areas as much as I can!
10. We are both very laid back and easy going, and liberal in our views. Both vegetarian (though not vegan).
11. A good doggy daycare for our pup would be a very big plus.

I very much miss the landscape of England (rolling green hills, stone farmhouses) and noticed several CD posters compared areas in northwestern Virginia to England. That would be a lovely big plus to have such areas not too long of a drive away

I'm not really a fan of humidity, and being here is Cary is pretty difficult. Hubby is adapting just fine, but I'm not particularly enjoying it though I'm trying my best to acclimatize. I really don't know how the humidity differs in various parts of VA. People here are telling me it's better up in areas of VA. Knowing it's relatively short-lived and there are 4 distinct seasons makes it easier to consider. The bugs here are throwing me for a loop, too. Omg, I have never seen a cockroach as big as the one I saw yesterday in my entire life I almost ran from the state screaming. And there are many big, flying creatures with long, dangly legs! Seriously though... it would be great if such things were less prolific than what I'm seeing in Cary.

We will be driving up to VA ton Friday evenings and spending Sat/Sun exploring different areas over the next 2 months. Any advice where to focus our attention on would be so very much appreciated. Hopefully I've been specific enough, but if not, please let me know and I'm happy to elaborate. This weekend will be our first visit so I'm super excited! We're going to begin with the Fairfax area.

And if anyone needs feedback on any of the places we've lived, please let me know as I'm happy to share and give back :-)

[TN Lily]

I would suggest looking around Charlottesville.

Per the website of Lifetime, these are the only VA locations: Centreville, Fairfax, Loudoun County & Reston. All are Northern Virginia. Of those four, I would pick Loudoun County.

Don't waste your time in any of the Hampton Roads jurisdictions as they fail on several of your critieria. The humidity here is worse than the other parts of the Commonwealth that I have lived in. H.R. fails the low crime as far as I'm concerned although some jurisdictions here are safer than others. Hurricanes happen here on occasion. I live in Newport News and would say that item no. 11 cannot be found in NN. I am not so sure about the rest of the area, but I have my doubts.

Good luck.

[Vacanegro]

Hmmmn, you have money so what you describe really fits well in NOVA/Fairfax county (perhaps Arlington but that would be a smaller place and more city-like.)

Here is some details that may help:

1. NOVA is top 10 affluent market (Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, Prince William)
2. Crime is almost non-existent. Fairfax police dept is huge.
3. GYM- Check - lots of them including your favorite
4. Stores - check
5. Culture -check
6. Great bike/walking trails - Custis, WO&D - can easily bike to DC
7. Close Burb - check
8. Good Schools - check (means good resale value and stable real estate market)
9. Thunder storms yes and occasionally 3 feet of snow but never frequently.
10. Variety of organic and ethnic gerocery stores and restaurants including great Indian.
11. Dog Hotels - check (but at ridiculous prices).

Negatives - Traffic and more traffic, expensive, taxes etc.

[spencgr]

Originally Posted by Vacanegro

Hmmmn, you have money so what you describe really fits well in NOVA/Fairfax county (perhaps Arlington but that would be a smaller place and more city-like.)

Agree that NOVA fits most of the requests, but a $700-$800K house is not considered "affluent" here. In Arlington, it'll get you a 1,500 SF house that needs work with no land.

[dragonryder]

Thank you everyone. We're going to start out checking NOVA this and next weekend, and tag the Charlottesville area after that as a good start.

Originally Posted by spencgr

Agree that NOVA fits most of the requests, but a $700-$800K house is not considered "affluent" here. In Arlington, it'll get you a 1,500 SF house that needs work with no land.

Hmm, a similar ring to the bay area. In looking at redfin/realtor at some of the homes, it seems like we may need to sacrifice a bit of commute time and look at homes in the more outlying areas there. I do like the home styles there more so than I do in the Raleigh/Durham area.

Originally Posted by spencgr

Don't waste your time in any of the Hampton Roads jurisdictions as they fail on several of your critieria. The humidity here is worse than the other parts of the Commonwealth that I have lived in.

Would it be true to say that the humidity in NOVA is noticeably less than in the Raleigh area of NC? Each day, I'm comparing Fairfax to Cary with weatherbug and it appears so.

[countryswan]

Take a look at Smith Mountain Lake... oh my!!

[dragonryder]

Originally Posted by countryswan

Take a look at Smith Mountain Lake... oh my!!

Gosh, it reminds me of the Lake District in northern England - very beautiful...

[tgbwc]

Originally Posted by spencgr

Agree that NOVA fits most of the requests, but a $700-$800K house is not considered "affluent" here. In Arlington, it'll get you a 1,500 SF house that needs work with no land.

Sure, in Arlington. A little further out and it's a bit different. There are plenty of areas in Fairfax County where that amount will buy a pretty nice house. That's $200-300k more than houses in my W. Springfield neighborhood sell for.

[dragonryder]

I've been scouring real estate boards to get a good sense off what's available and home styles. I noticed there are several good home matches in north east of Gainesville / Sudley Springs. A couple in particular caught my eye which are on the border of Prince William/Fairfax County. Some have a bit of a Mediterranean flair.

Some of the lakefront homes in Reston are really nice, though smaller lots. It'll be an exciting weekend :-)

[emsman]

The Gainesville area has exploded with growth in the last decade and will continue to grow, be prepared for that area and Haymarket to expand over the years as the D.C./Northern VA metro just keeps growing.

Up there I recommend Western areas of Loudoun County(town of Purcellville,VA for reference) and Clarke County (town of Berryville,VA for reference). Not over developed yet but steadily growing, still a lot of beautiful landscapes and not far from all you want.

With your budget and no kids it will be a tough choice, MANY areas will fit. Away from Northern VA gets you a lot more for your money, enough you can get a nice 400K house and build the gym of your dreams. I agree with TN Lily, stay out of the Hampton Roads area.