Prince George's County (Bowie, Greenbelt, Kettering: real estate, house prices, neighborhoods)

[lscalder]

first of all i make 150k a yr and my husband makes around the same so lets get that straight. Now if the same shooting that happen in your neighborhood happen in pg it would make the news big time. Not everyone have to agree up on moving to pg county what I am saying is donot bash the entire county. only certain areas have crime in pg county and to let you know I have went to bed a few night with my door unlock and I am still alive. just like Washington Dc got rid of the crime and some of the crime did move into pg. Pg county is pushing the crime right out by the high prices of homes in to counties such as Hardfort county and others which are cheaper to live then pg county. The reason why pg prices are high is because they have to get rid of the crime and to do so the prices of homes have to be high. I remember when everyone use to bash Washington Dc because of the crimes but DC home prices got to expensive to where the crimes are lower now thats the same thing Pg is doing. So if you live in a cheap county where people who make under 50k can afford a single family home run because thats where the crime is moving form pg county to. To better the school the prices of homes and property taxes have to be high which goes toward schools. Montgomery and Howard and areas of Va have very high property taxes which means they have good schools because property taxes goes toward funding schools. My problem again is bashing the entire county of pg which is not fair to those are living a safe,nice,happy life. Every one is always going to have a story about the neighborhood where they live and I my self have only good story about Upper Marlboro maryland

[triniboy]

I agree with "lscalder" there are nice places in PG County such as Upper Marlboro, Bowie, Brandywine, Clinton and Laurel to name a few. I work for a title company and we see a lot of different properties all over the state and to generalize about all of PG County is being ignorant. What is the name of your mortgage company? We've just opened our office from New Jersey in Laurel and wanted to familiarize ourselves with all that are out there in our area.

[lscalder]

I am looking for a title company now thats close to my office in upper marlboro so maybe we can do business together. Whats the name of your title company we can start doing business together

[triniboy]

It`s called Main Street Title and Settlement Services LLC. We have closers that go to clients homes or your office or even our office. We do MD, DC and VA. I~m not sure how much I cna talk about it here without the administrators interveining. Do you have an any contact info?

[triniboy]

Who do you use now for title and do you like their services?

[lscalder]

I will find your company and on monday and give you guys a try

[triniboy]

How are you going to find us?

[lscalder]

google the company name

[howsitgoingdude3]

To better the school the prices of homes and property taxes have to be high which goes toward schools. Montgomery and Howard and areas of Va have very high property taxes which means they have good schools because property taxes goes toward funding schools. My problem again is bashing the entire county of pg which is not fair to those are living a safe,nice,happy life. maryland[/quote]

Okay, Icecalder, most of what you said i'm not going to disagree with as i've said earlier. Yes, there are some areas of PG that are extremely nice, but again the overall county is not! Nor are the houses in PG expensive for the DC metro area! In fact it is a lot cheaper to find a 5500 or 7000sq foot house in PG than it is to find the same comparable house in Fairfax or Montgomery Co. PG is by far the cheapest of the three counties in terms of pricing for "upper class" individuals. Go to www.realtor.com (broken link) and look up the number of 1 million dollar houses in your area compared to the 1 million dollars houses in Great Falls, Va , Mclean, Va , Clifton, Va, Fairfax Station, Va, Burke, Va, Tysons Corner, Oakton, Va, and North Arlington. Then go look at the neighborhoods in Moco like Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Potomac, Darnestown, and Olney. Then compare prices, because these are comparable upscale housing areas in other counties and you'll see that PG prices are in now way inflated and are definitely more affordable.

Now on to the point i totally disagree with you on. PG county residents pay the highest property taxes in the area. Fairfax county residents actually pay lower property taxes and Moco tax payers do as well. You are totally wrong and furthermore tax base is only 1 component of creating strong public schools. PG also spends the most money on its school system then any other county 1.6 billion, so funding is not the issue. The schooling issue is much more complicated then the dumb downed version you listed. PG schools have the following things wrong with them.

Poor Management at the top levels (incompetence)
School board is full of dumptards
Students the majority of which have no desire to learn (as they do not want to be labled "acting white")
Disruptive students ruining the lesson plan for the few students there that would like to learn
Poor Parental involvement in their childrens lives
The PTA in PG is practically non existent
Teachers who have no incentive in teaching a majority of black students
A majority of black studetns that really do not care much for their education

These are some of the reasons PG county has poor schools.

If you knew anything about the basics of home values and how home values appreciate you would know that PG has really no chance in hell of rapidly appreciating their home values and in fact if you're living in one of the few "fat cat" neighborhoods you'll have less appreciation.

Home Values go up under the following situations

Excellent School System
Job Opportunities (Large Fortune 500 companies relocating)
Pooling white collar Talent (the growth of IT in both Nova and Moco as an example)
NO CRIME or extremely low rates of crime
Overall reputation of the area

all of these things fail in PG. Look i've lived in a number of "upsacle" neighborhoods in a number of different states and PG was by far the worst and offerd the least to residents of any income level. You're not going to sway my decision and I lived in quote "a nice area of PG" and still found it to be sucky and that has more to do with the people there than it does with that particular area. No matter what you want to say the county is overrun with low class people and that's my problem. YOu cannot go anywhere and find a majority of upper class people in that area not even in the "upper class areas" because of all those unique mortgages that a lot of these private banks allow. You have all of these psuedo wannabe high class types moving into these "nice neighborhoods" and bringing their low class uneducated children with them and just ruining it!! The problem is PG is way toooo affordable!!! Those same people pretending to be upper class in PG couldn't afford to live in a comparable area in Fairfax or Moco only a small portion of them could.

I'd also like to pose this question to you. If PG is so great and some many "wealthy" blacks want to live there why do all the extremely "wealthy and educated blacks" live outside of the county in Fairfax or Moco or further into VA. Um, the second richest black women in America net worth 800 million lives in Loudon County and she helped start BET. The richest black man also would rather live in VA or DC than own anything PG and hes' worth billions. Let's move onto the black entertainers and athletes where do you think they buy houses? Yes, you guessed it in Mclean, Va and Great Falls, VA never in PG. The only black athelte with a large sum of money that ever lived in PG was Chris Webber, so if it is so great why do most of the blacks with large amounts of money choose not to live there? I do not even think Kathy Hughes lives in PG county and she founded Radio One which owns WPGC and some other stations and she's worth like 600 million. I think she lives in Potomac, MD as well as her son Alfred. Also sports broadcaster and Harvard graduate James Brown grew up in PG and now lives in beautiful Bethesda MD. Oh and I cannot forget one of my hero's Colin Powell he and his black wife choose to live in McLean, VA and a large portion of the black elite (senators, former CEO's like Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae), and many other extremely well to do blacks NEVER CHOOSE PG as a place to setup residence. Hell Michael Jordan wouldnt' even live in PG when he lived he was an owner with the Wizards!!! Why do you think he would rather live in Moco than PG? Why don't you explain to me why some these well educated truley "wealthy" blacks and ghetto rich athletes would rather choose these other counties over PG if it is so great and offers a great living for the affluent, rich, and wealthy?

[howsitgoingdude3]

Iscalder just to prove my point a little bit more. Oaks Bluff on Martha Vineyard is a extremely upscale island along the cape in MA. It is well known by upper class blacks as a vacation spot and a large lot of them also lived there. Anyway here's an area with both whites and blacks living on an island in an expensive area and look what people have to say. Notice there is no crime the people there are upperclass and have very large expensive houses..If you remember the movie called the "Ink well" they attempted to portray life on the island and did a sub par job. Anyway check out the link. //www.city-data.com/forum/massa...ak-bluffs.html