Work on the Hill and downtown, where to live?

[Anonymous]

I cannot say enough about living on the Hill - it is, in a word, AWESOME! (Yep, guess I am a Hill booster - what can I say - I love it!). We live in the Brent district, walk to work (on the Mall) and we probably use our car once a week. My particular sub-neighborhood feels quite safe (we can see the 1D substation from our door!). We LOVE Brent. All that being said, I understand houses on the Hill are quite expensive at the moment, and sell in a heartbeat. So - I don't think 800K will get you a 3/2 in the nicer parts of the Hill. Our 3/2 was a chunk more than that 5 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For free schools ARlington near Ballston metro should work for your price. If you are a good shopper and move in the school year, maybe even closer in. Walk to metro and both of you should be to work in 40 minutes door to door. Alt, drive in together early, you park on the hill and the other metro downtown.

Is this a joke? The Metro ride from Ballston to Metro Center at rush hour is just over ten minutes. Add the roughly ten minute walk to the station, and the commute is just slightly longer than capitol hill to drown.

Arlington is fine. But if the OP loves Capitol Hill, then I think she has her mind all set!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For free schools ARlington near Ballston metro should work for your price. If you are a good shopper and move in the school year, maybe even closer in. Walk to metro and both of you should be to work in 40 minutes door to door. Alt, drive in together early, you park on the hill and the other metro downtown.

Is this a joke? The Metro ride from Ballston to Metro Center at rush hour is just over ten minutes. Add the roughly ten minute walk to the station, and the commute is just slightly longer than capitol hill to drown.

Arlington is fine. But if the OP loves Capitol Hill, then I think she has her mind all set!

OP here: Don't really have my heart set on anywhere. Mainly looking to end the long commute and have an option we can use for public for at least the elementary years. Where we are currently, I am not willing to use the public school and I've toured the privates that take children for a full day pre-school with before and after care and I'm just so-so on most of them.

That said, we looked in Clarendon and Pentagon City ages ago when we first bought and my H couldn't really fit in a lot of the houses. He's 6'7" and it seemed much of the living space was in finished basements with 6' or 6'5" ceilings, washer/dryers tucked under even shorter areas and many with closets and showers built into eaves on the top floors where he couldn't stand up. Perhaps we didn't look in the right areas, but 7 years ago when we were looking our budget was $600K and that's what we saw for that price point.

[Anonymous]

You can't really live on the Hill for 600k, unless you live in someone's basement. Or, in "outer Hill". What about Penn Quarter?

[Anonymous]

We love Tenley/AU. On redline (I did to union station for hill job for 3 years, its fine and in the event you end up downtown eventually, it gets even better). Great public school. It doesn't have charm or crime of the hill but we get around with minimal car use, love our neighbors and feel like we're in a good blend of urban living (public transport, bike commutable, basics that are walkable) . Trust me though, we have days we wish we were in eastern market but the schools are a killer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We love Tenley/AU. On redline (I did to union station for hill job for 3 years, its fine and in the event you end up downtown eventually, it gets even better). Great public school. It doesn't have charm or crime of the hill but we get around with minimal car use, love our neighbors and feel like we're in a good blend of urban living (public transport, bike commutable, basics that are walkable) . Trust me though, we have days we wish we were in eastern market but the schools are a killer.

What can you get in Tenley/AU for OP's price range?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]I cannot say enough about living on the Hill - it is, in a word, AWESOME! (Yep, guess I am a Hill booster - what can I say - I love it!). We live in the Brent district, walk to work (on the Mall) and we probably use our car once a week. My particular sub-neighborhood feels quite safe (we can see the 1D substation from our door!). We LOVE Brent. All that being said, I understand houses on the Hill are quite expensive at the moment, and sell in a heartbeat. So - I don't think 800K will get you a 3/2 in the nicer parts of the Hill. Our 3/2 was a chunk more than that 5 years ago.[/quote]

I love the Hill too! It's totally safe around Stanton and Lincoln Park areas. The kids and I talk a walk every evening before bedtime. Dozens of people jog around Lincoln Park way past sunset. It's great.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I cannot say enough about living on the Hill - it is, in a word, AWESOME! (Yep, guess I am a Hill booster - what can I say - I love it!). We live in the Brent district, walk to work (on the Mall) and we probably use our car once a week. My particular sub-neighborhood feels quite safe (we can see the 1D substation from our door!). We LOVE Brent. All that being said, I understand houses on the Hill are quite expensive at the moment, and sell in a heartbeat. So - I don't think 800K will get you a 3/2 in the nicer parts of the Hill. Our 3/2 was a chunk more than that 5 years ago.[/quote]

I love the Hill too! [b]It's totally safe around Stanton and Lincoln Park areas.[/b] The kids and I talk a walk every evening before bedtime. Dozens of people jog around Lincoln Park way past sunset. It's great.[/quote]

I can understand why you love the Hill, but it's disingenuous to say "it's totally safe around Stanton and Lincoln Park." The market on Lincoln Park was robbed at gun point just a couple of weeks ago. There is tons of crime around there.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I cannot say enough about living on the Hill - it is, in a word, AWESOME! (Yep, guess I am a Hill booster - what can I say - I love it!). We live in the Brent district, walk to work (on the Mall) and we probably use our car once a week. My particular sub-neighborhood feels quite safe (we can see the 1D substation from our door!). We LOVE Brent. All that being said, I understand houses on the Hill are quite expensive at the moment, and sell in a heartbeat. So - I don't think 800K will get you a 3/2 in the nicer parts of the Hill. Our 3/2 was a chunk more than that 5 years ago.[/quote]

I love the Hill too! [b]It's totally safe around Stanton and Lincoln Park areas.[/b] The kids and I talk a walk every evening before bedtime. Dozens of people jog around Lincoln Park way past sunset. It's great.[/quote]

I can understand why you love the Hill, but it's disingenuous to say "it's totally safe around Stanton and Lincoln Park." The market on Lincoln Park was robbed at gun point just a couple of weeks ago. There is tons of crime around there.[/quote]

That's news to me. Around "where" exactly? The Hill's a big place .. . and it's not stopping the National Park Service from having movie night Aug.1. They're showing "A Shark's Tale" starting at 8:45 p.m. So obviously the they thinks it's fine, and so do I.

[Anonymous]

We live by the Van Ness metro. I work near Union Station, my husband near Judiciary Square. We bought a year and a half ago, and looked all over the city. I have a colleague who lives in the Palisades, the elementary is great, but she is considering moving by us because the middle school options are not great. OP, you should be able to find something in North Cleveland Park, we really like it here. There are lots of Hill boosters here, I work on the Hill and I went to law school there, there are very few areas of the Hill that I would consider safe. I used to live in Cleveland Park, but we could not afford a $1 million house. My commute door to door is 45 minutes. Station to station it is 20 minutes. But I don't walk fast. In Cleveland Park I was closer to the metro, it was 30 minutes door to door.

[Anonymous]

Pp here. You can get a duplex for $800k here. One sold on Veazey recently for $830. Another is under contract on Reno (SF) for $799 list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't really live on the Hill for 600k, unless you live in someone's basement. Or, in "outer Hill". What about Penn Quarter?

Read more carefully -- her current budget is not $600k, it's $800k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp here. You can get a duplex for $800k here. One sold on Veazey recently for $830. Another is under contract on Reno (SF) for $799 list.

If you look around Tenley, make sure you have a map of what is in-bound for which school as the boundaries between Janney and Hearst runs along there. Both good schools but different, Hearst is smaller and on the rise, Janney is very well regarded with beautiful facilities from a recent renovation but quite large, both feed into Deal which gets you public through middle school at least if that is what you want. As you edge further south you may move into Eaton territory. Eaton is very good, but if DCPS ever does redistricting then redistricting that boundary into Hardy is a definite possibility. I am personally optimistic that Hardy will tip over into a highly desirable middle school within its boundaries over the next few years, but it is not a sure thing.

Things come up in that price range on occasion in all those boundaries, but you have to look and I second that continuing to look year round is important and it is likely to be a smaller or less updated home, but you can have that with 3 BD, 2 BA. We live IB for Janney, I commute daily by car from AU Park to SWDC. I go early so miss most traffic and it is 20 minutes from when I lock my front door until I pull into my garage. I worked near the white house not long ago and the commute was shorter. To my office in rush hour from Janney after morning drop off is 30 minutes. Tons of parents use the redline as it is a half block from school. During the middle of the day or at pick up it takes me 20 minutes to get to the school from my office. I know a number of Janney families where one or both parents barely if ever drive although they are walking distance to the school.