Northern Virgina or Maryland

[purbeast0]

Thanks for the detail information!

I also see most house have big yards, everyone there has riding lawn mower XD

The wife is checking out Sterling now after she saw some posts from a different forum. Since I will be working from home, travel is not a problem. Abut weather, how cold des it gets… Is it mainly dry cold air.. since we got used to Texas heat, summer should not be a problem.

The closer you get to DC the smaller the yards will be. I think I am on like .35 acres in a suburban area in MD. It's pretty common but also depending how much you want to spend, you can get more land for sure. My various friends who live in Sterling probably have a lot about the same size as mine, possibly a little bigger maybe?

The winters in like the past 3-4 years have been pretty mild compared to before that. Like we haven't really had a huge snow storm. 2 years ago we literally had no snow which I felt bad for my kids. Last year we had a bit more but there wasn't any of the huge 12+ inch storms we usually have. The temperatures will be below freezing at night but during the day when the sun comes out, it'll be like in the 40s. Obviously it can get colder than that though and we will have some fronts come in as well.

The summers can get humid AF though. Like you won't even want to go outside during the day because it's just sticky as well. I'd take dry heat over humidity any day of the week though.

Generally speaking for me personally, I don't like the cold in general but can tolerate it, but by the time the warm spring weather starts to come by, I am ready for it. And the same goes for the fall time when football comes on and temps start to drop, I am sick of the heat. It is nice having all of the seasons in that sense.

 

[jpiniero]

Even in Sterling, it looks like SFH starts at 700k. You could maybe do a TH for 500k.

 

[lxskllr]

Winters are humid also, and it can make you feel colder. Back when it still got cold here, I had a woman tell me she felt colder here than she did at home in Wyoming. Dunno, I'm skeptical, but in any case, I think winters are done for basically ever. Winter now might be a week near the beginning of January, maybe not at all.

 

[purbeast0]

Even in Sterling, it looks like SFH starts at 700k. You could maybe do a TH for 500k.

That is where my friends just sold their house for $1.1M.

 

[jpiniero]

That is where my friends just sold their house for $1.1M.

That's crazy.

I would also wonder how annoying planes coming in would be from there, depending on how close you are to Dulles.

 

[Torn Mind]

Winters are humid also, and it can make you feel colder. Back when it still got cold here, I had a woman tell me she felt colder here than she did at home in Wyoming. Dunno, I'm skeptical, but in any case, I think winters are done for basically ever. Winter now might be a week near the beginning of January, maybe not at all.

I dispute that. Humidity makes the cold bearable. It's humid snowy days that don't feel like winter is sucking the soul out of you. It's those clear 15mph northwesterly days that suck the most.

 

[Torn Mind]

I'm in MD and grew up here as well. I live in Montgomery County, which surprisingly isn't on your list. I expected you to be looking at that part of MD since it was between Nova and MD. Montgomery County is basically bordering NoVa in the parts you are looking at.

I go back/forth between both of the areas often and I mean, they are not very different as far as what it would be like to live in the areas and your every day life. I do think traffic in NoVa is much worse though, and for some reason it feels like everywhere I drive in NoVa, they are just doing never ending road work.

You are correct about the property taxes in VA on cars though. My friends in VA have mentioned that to me before. You also have to get your car inspected either annually or every 2 years, whereas in MD you only need it inspected one time when you purchase it.

Manassass is out there. It's far away from anything and you have to take 66 to get there, which again is always under construction and one of those nightmare roads you never want to be on. Sterling is like not quite as far out there but it is also quite a bit away from DC, but it is a nice area and I have a couple friends who live out that way. It just takes a while to get there from where we were in MD.

My wife grew up in Annandale and depending where you are, can be a bit shady. It's closer to DC than Sterling for sure. Fairfax proper is nicer than Annandale for sure but it will be pricier to live there too.

The general COL in both areas is pretty comparable though - housing, electricity, gas, etc. In general, in MD or VA, the closer you are to DC, the more housing costs. I will say though housing has definitely gone up quite a bit in the past decade or so. My house was purchased in 2012 for $420k and is probably worth like $700k-800k now. Our friends who purchased a house in Sterling in 2020 for like $700k was just sold for $1.1million and they only sold because they went through a divorce.

But you mention parts of MD that I personally have no interest in living. I dislike Baltimore and Towson is pretty close by to it. The only thing I really know about Towson is there is a college there so I would assume it's basically living in a college town, but I could be totally wrong.

Annapolis is a nice area and I would assume would be more expensive the closer you are to the water. I go there every now and then but it's usually downtown Annapolis just to go out for dinner or something like that. I always thought Annapolis was far from everything as well but that is probably due to where I grew up.

I had some friends who lived in NoVa that moved to San Diego for about 10 years, and they moved back here like 3-4 years ago. It's definitely much cheaper in NoVa compared to that part of CA, relatively speaking.

Towson is okay. It's developed enough such that you don't have to go into Baltimore City to do anything. Ruxton is also a rich people's neighborhood.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/uqoyv4/is_towson_an_okay_place_to_live

 

[purbeast0]

That's crazy.

I would also wonder how annoying planes coming in would be from there, depending on how close you are to Dulles.

Nah it's not that close to the point that it would be distracting. I've been to their houses multiple times and never heard anything out of the ordinary. In the area in general you see a lot of planes with BWI, IAD, and DCA all being around.

 

[nisryus]

Thx purbeast0 for all of the info.

Now wife is looking at realtor.

Since the market is not in a healthy way around here.. There are too many houses on market and not enough buyers. After the panademic, the builders have buily way too many houses and apartment/condos. So supply is way over than demand.

So she saw the commerical from Orchard, which if you use them you can buy a new house and move in there, before your old house is evern sold. Has anyone has experience using them? Sounds attractive especially for this housing market.

I do wonder if they really are willing to list a house for 3 to 5 months before possibly closing a deal that will lower than the asking price. I have seen houses that are good around my area been on the market for couple months already.

 

[jpiniero]

You don't need any kind of third party to buy a new home before selling the old one.

Assuming you have the coin.

 

[nisryus]

I wish i have the coin.. just that Lottery didn't seem to like me much..

 

[jpiniero]

I wish i have the coin.. just that Lottery didn't seem to like me much..

I suppose what you could do is sell the place and then rent an apartment for a single year. Then use that time to scout the area and find something you really like, or if you even want to live there long term.

 

[nisryus]

The wife narrowed down to couple areas... Sterling and Silver Spring for MA and NoVA, for California its either Pinole or Castro Valley.

Housing prices are really similar between them all. Of course, SF Bay is the SV, but now there are way too many people out of work and looking for jobs there, making it harding to land a good gig. Plus Pinole (cheaper) is so far it's a bad commute to work to any of the tech places.

NoVA or MD have more jobs at the govt and private entities, but she just doesn't know if house value would go up later, and how bad the winter will be. (again she hates hot and cold weather)

 

[nisryus]

I suppose what you could do is sell the place and then rent an apartment for a single year. Then use that time to scout the area and find something you really like, or if you even want to live there long term.

We toyed with that idea, but in her mind if we rent a year, might as well put that in mortgage payment.

 

[nisryus]

My job is pretty stable now, since i moved away from gaming company into a real tech company. But pay is not as high since the company thinks TX COL is still low... which is not! But if all goes well I will be working at current job for three to five years, or longer.

Hence the idea of living furthe raway like Pinole or Sterling since I am work from home.

 

[jpiniero]

We toyed with that idea, but in her mind if we rent a year, might as well put that in mortgage payment.

You said so yourself that you don't exactly have the cash though. I suppose the other option would be to only put 5% down. But at 700k, that's still 35k. And the lender would probably make you pay PMI.

You'd also have to consider the moving costs which I imagine would be high.

 

[nisryus]

most likely we will move a few things, as most of our stuffs are old and we are likely not to move them to new place.

cash wise i have some, if i can sell my current house, which only have 10k mortgage left, i will have 420k available and that would be more than enough for down payment. problem is selling the house now is gonna be difficult due to market condition around my area.

 

[nisryus]

purbeast0, you said live in Montgomery County, which part? Any area we should avoid looking into?

 

[jpiniero]

purbeast0, you said live in Montgomery County, which part? Any area we should avoid looking into?

Ah that's the other thing... the local taxes in MD are really high. I used a paycheck calculator and the difference between 0% and MC MD was $960 a month for 150k HHI just in income tax.

 

[purbeast0]

purbeast0, you said live in Montgomery County, which part? Any area we should avoid looking into?

I'm in Rockville. I grew up in Silver Spring.

I like Rockville better than where I grew up. Silver Spring proper is rather large though. Like I would not want to live in downtown Silver Spring, and the place I grew up at is just outside of that right near where there is a 495 entrance, and that area has just gotten so damn congested. The houses are also smaller down there as well. Wheaton is part of Silver Spring and it is just way too crowded for me. I hate driving through there when I go to my moms house.

There are still some nice places to live though and they are all pretty safe I'd say.

But then you have places like Burtonsville which are also considered Silver Spring. That is borderline Prince Georges county, which I would avoid, and the closer you get to the PG county line, the less nice it becomes.

If you making a lot of coin, Bethesda and Potomac are nice areas as well. Bethesda is closer to the city of Bethesda whereas Potomac is little bit further but still in very nice areas.

Gaithersburg and Olney are also good places IMO. They have both built up quite a bit in the past 2 decades but housing prices have also gone up with that.

Overall I mean there aren't too many places in MoCo I could say are not that great to live, aside from places that are closer to the busy areas of the cities like downtown Silver Spring, or right in Wheaton, or borderline PG county.

If you haver any specific areas in mind just let me know.

Also, you said you left a gaming company - I'm assuming you do some kind of software development then?

That is what I do and there are a lot of jobs in the area for it. If you want to get into the government contracting side of things you can make some very good money as well.

EDIT:

As mentioned above, the taxes in MoCo are not cheap compared to other parts of MD I believe. Also the property tax has gone up a lot in recent years. They have a program called the Homestead act that makes it so your taxes cannot go up more than 10% a year though, which I wish I knew about prior to mine going up like $1k/yr, but I am in the process of applying for it now.

 

[nisryus]

I was in Live/DevOps but mainly server mgmt and publish game updates to client/servers. Now I am at IBM PES doing server and some firewall and infrastructure maintenance kind of works for their contracted clients. Pay is not that great but the job is stable.

That is why we are not looking for anything over 900k or a mil, because if we sell the current house, minus the 10k mortgage and fee, we can put down 410k or so, which means if we buy a 800k house we will still have a 390k to 400k mortgage...

Since the other house (a rental) is half owned by the in-laws, i cannot just sell that and use the money to cover for the new house... plus the in-laws don't have the $$ to give me, even if i am to 'sell' them my share.

 

[nisryus]

Moving and buying house is not easy.. maybe i need to put up a GoFundMe page!

 

[purbeast0]

I was in Live/DevOps but mainly server mgmt and publish game updates to client/servers. Now I am at IBM PES doing server and some firewall and infrastructure maintenance kind of works for their contracted clients. Pay is not that great but the job is stable.

That is why we are not looking for anything over 900k or a mil, because if we sell the current house, minus the 10k mortgage and fee, we can put down 410k or so, which means if we buy a 800k house we will still have a 390k to 400k mortgage...

Since the other house (a rental) is half owned by the in-laws, i cannot just sell that and use the money to cover for the new house... plus the in-laws don't have the $$ to give me, even if i am to 'sell' them my share.

There are a lot of devops types of positions too around here so I think if you look for another gig you will be just fine.

 

[nisryus]

How is the area near Lincoln Park or near Rockville Civic Center? The houses around there seems to be.. lower priced than the area west of 355, like West End Park or New Mark Commons. The wife saw several Asian groceries and she got excited! XD

 

[nisryus]

BTW, do you really need to use heater for like five months (between novemebt and March) since it gets cold? (Wife was asking)