Chicago suburbs vs NoVa Real Estate Market

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Housing prices will be much lower. You can get into the north shore suburbs for much less than what you'd pay for an equivalent location here

I moved to DMV 10 years ago from Chicago.

I do not miss Chicago one bit.

Housing prices are cheaper in the North Shore suburbs (than Chevy Chase/Bethesda), but not significantly so.

The weather is terrible. The people are boring. Try finding someone who reads the New York Times!!

Ugh. I could not get out of there fast enough.

[Anonymous]

Wilmette on the North shore. About 30-40 minutes on the train to downtown Chicago. Older houses, but many are very updated and beautiful. Close to the lakefront, many amenities. great schools. Still, very cold in the winter. Lovely spring and fall in Chicago, which is a beautiful, large city, much nicer than DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wilmette on the North shore. About 30-40 minutes on the train to downtown Chicago. Older houses, but many are very updated and beautiful. Close to the lakefront, many amenities. great schools. Still, very cold in the winter. Lovely spring and fall in Chicago, which is a beautiful, large city, much nicer than DC.

Wilmette doesn't have much in it. You're going to want to drive to another town over to do your shopping and dining.

[Anonymous]

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/819-Redbud-Ln-Wilmette-IL-60091/3370727_zpid/

Newer house. 2007. $1.35M

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wilmette on the North shore. About 30-40 minutes on the train to downtown Chicago. Older houses, but many are very updated and beautiful. Close to the lakefront, many amenities. great schools. Still, very cold in the winter. Lovely spring and fall in Chicago, which is a beautiful, large city, much nicer than DC.

Wilmette doesn't have much in it. You're going to want to drive to another town over to do your shopping and dining.

Wilmette has plenty in it! I used to live there, and I know this for a fact! If you want Ikea and Costco, yes, you have to travel. But regular shopping is available in Wilmette. It's a great suburb (except for that cold weather).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wilmette on the North shore. About 30-40 minutes on the train to downtown Chicago. Older houses, but many are very updated and beautiful. Close to the lakefront, many amenities. great schools. Still, very cold in the winter. Lovely spring and fall in Chicago, which is a beautiful, large city, much nicer than DC.

Wilmette doesn't have much in it. You're going to want to drive to another town over to do your shopping and dining.

Wilmette has plenty in it! I used to live there, and I know this for a fact! If you want Ikea and Costco, yes, you have to travel. But regular shopping is available in Wilmette. It's a great suburb (except for that cold weather).

Recently? I was there today. Lots of empty storefronts in the downtown area near the Metra station, and lots of the retail is open very limited hours. Like the coffee shop that is only open Fri-Sun until 1pm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wilmette on the North shore. About 30-40 minutes on the train to downtown Chicago. Older houses, but many are very updated and beautiful. Close to the lakefront, many amenities. great schools. Still, very cold in the winter. Lovely spring and fall in Chicago, which is a beautiful, large city, much nicer than DC.

Wilmette doesn't have much in it. You're going to want to drive to another town over to do your shopping and dining.

Wilmette has plenty in it! I used to live there, and I know this for a fact! If you want Ikea and Costco, yes, you have to travel. But regular shopping is available in Wilmette. It's a great suburb (except for that cold weather).

Recently? I was there today. Lots of empty storefronts in the downtown area near the Metra station, and lots of the retail is open very limited hours. Like the coffee shop that is only open Fri-Sun until 1pm.

Btw, that's not a dig at Wilmette necessarily, but if OP is really looking for something along the lines of NOVA/MD suburbs like Bethesda, Arlington, Fairfax... I'm surprised that people are mentioning Highland Park and Wilmette. Not really a fair comparison, IMO unless you're really just talking about schools and housing stock. I find the NOVA/MD burbs much more liveable.

[Anonymous]

Interesting tips thanks - I knew property taxes were high but these seem NJ level high, where I grew up; good idea to think of it in terms of monthly cost rather than all in purchase price. And yes commuting would be an issue. My commute here [pre pandemic] leaving my front door in Ballston to my desk near Union Station was 50 min via metro and about the same driving; given that we were thinking to buy [before this Chicago thing came up as a consideration] in Vienna I was prepared for that commute to get longer whenever we return to the office FT but sounds like Chicago is even more than that - maybe on par with NYC metro area commute times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/819-Redbud-Ln-Wilmette-IL-60091/3370727_zpid/

Newer house. 2007. $1.35M

That aint 800k. And not even a nice part of Wilmette.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Housing prices will be much lower. You can get into the north shore suburbs for much less than what you'd pay for an equivalent location here

There is no Nova equivalent to the North Shore, sorry keep dreaming.

OP, we just relocated to a Chicago suburb last year and paid in your range. Generally, the housing stock in the most desirable suburbs (of which there is a lot to choose) is older than 90s because Chicago suburbs are much more established than in Nova which is comparatively new. But that is what makes the suburbs here so much nicer IMO. If you want something newer you will be moving further out. It’s also worth noting than the public schools in the Chicago suburbs are generally much more broadly and consistently highly rated than nova public schools which appeared to only have small pockets of good schools which drove up the values and competitiveness in those small areas. That’s not the case here, schools are excellent.

Also, people always point to the winters here as being an issue but the way winters are handled here compared to NOva is a huge game changer. The roads get cleared ASAP, schools and daycares rarely close for snow days. When we lived in Alexandria, that was such a headache the face that every other week our kids were home bc daycare was closed due to the region not adequately able to remove and handle snow.

We have so many restaurants where we live, so many bike trails, parks, community events, a downtown area with three metra stops within a mile of our home if we wanted to go into the city. Love it, best decision we made.

It’s not a lot cheaper than nova, but generally yes you can get much more for your money in terms of location, schools and community niceness. Keep in mind though there is no open land here for building so housing stock is older. A lot is from the 20s through the 60s and 70s. Further out you’ll get 80s and 90s.

[Anonymous]

I would pay higher taxes for better schools in a smaller system to avoid the total shit show that the inefficient, corrupt bureaucracy known as FCPS has become. As it is most in our NoVa community are now looking to send our kids to privates so we end up having to pay twice. An area like Winnetka or Wilmette sounds wonderful in comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the property taxes that are the barrier to getting in. While the housing prices are lower, their taxes are sky high.

A $900K house in Naperville for example has a property tax of $20K. A $900K house in MoCo would have around $10K in property taxes.

Not to mention that a Naperville to Chicago commute just would not be feasible for most. If you're from the Midwest, I guess it's no big deal to travel for that long, but I think it's crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chicagoland is significantly cheaper, but yes property taxes are higher. There are some really beautiful towns out there, and Chicago as a city trumps DC by a mile. Look at places like the North Shore (older housing stock), Glenview, Northbrook, Arlington Heights. Naperville in the west.

Do be aware of the winter. It gets cold.

If you plan to drive instead of Metra, it will be well over an hour of drive time for all of these towns. Probably closer to an hour and a half during really busy times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here - just to clarify I’m not against older housing stock if it provides the space we need, is well maintained and somewhat beautiful. Like I see older housing stock in Richmond that I think is great and very worth looking into (if I had some reason to be in Richmond) but I see the 1940-60s, 1000 sqft brick homes near me in Arlington which I assume are going for 900k-1mil now (IDK haven’t looked at a listing lately), and it’s like nope I’d rather have a cookie cutter TH further in the suburbs.

Yuck. To each their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here - just to clarify I’m not against older housing stock if it provides the space we need, is well maintained and somewhat beautiful. Like I see older housing stock in Richmond that I think is great and very worth looking into (if I had some reason to be in Richmond) but I see the 1940-60s, 1000 sqft brick homes near me in Arlington which I assume are going for 900k-1mil now (IDK haven’t looked at a listing lately), and it’s like nope I’d rather have a cookie cutter TH further in the suburbs.

Yuck. To each their own.

Arlington housing stock is ugly and lower middle class housing in most parts of the country.