baltimore to DC commute on MARC
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Anonymous
| There are gorgeous homes in Montgomery County, MD for $450-$500k in good school districts on good land, walking distance to metro and built AFTER 1978 (which is the KEY to avoiding lead poisoning from the older Baltimore row houses). Please get a realtor! I highly recommend redfin. |
Anonymous
| I lived in the Wyman Park neighborhood and really liked it-very neighborly and lots of green space. I used to walk to the Marc, which I guess a lot of people wouldn't do, but it's also a quick bus ride. |
Anonymous
| For $500-$550K, you could find some nice SFH or townhouses in NOVA on the VRE line or the Metro (near Springfield-Franconia). |
Anonymous
| Baltimore is more than just baltimore city. Maybe OP is considering one of the suburbs like Towson....but you can live in any of the burbs from Montgomery county down to Baltimore county in your price range and be fine. |
Anonymous
Yep. There are places walking distance to Rockvlle metro and town center right at your $500-550k price point. They're mostly zoned for Rockville, rather than Richard Montgomery HS (which is more desired) but are still a pretty solid bet relative to some of the Baltimore HS options. https://www.redfin.com/MD/Rockville/909-Grandin-Ave-20851/home/10511678 https://www.redfin.com/MD/Rockville/720-Maple-Ave-20850/home/10514223 This would be a major fixer but would give you space for a big home office, which a teleworker might want. https://www.redfin.com/MD/Rockville/300-Baltimore-Rd-20850/home/10551539 Or, if you opt for more straightup suburbia, you can get a lot of house in a great school district - and this isn't so far from Kentlands, which offers some of the walkable shops thing. https://www.redfin.com/MD/Gaithersburg/11705-Fernshire-Rd-20878/home/10795586 |
Anonymous
The problem isn’t Marc but metro and light rail/or 83– at least two of which will be needed for op’s husband to get to work unless they live within walking distance in Baltimore which would rule out Homeland, Guilford, Mount Washington, and Roland Park. Still a 15 minutes walk from Bolton Hill. Poly’s facilities are extremely run down and only slightly more three quarters of the school goes to college despite it being an application School. Good for Baltimore city schools which are pathetic, but substandard to an average school in any other Maryland county, |
Anonymous
Did you live in Baltimore more than three years ago? There has been a massive increase in crime in all neighborhoods since Mosby took office, even downtown and in the inner harbor. Hard to understand if you don’t actually live here and deal with on a regular basis, since only the huge increase in shootings makes the news. |
Anonymous
You're comparing apples and oranges (city to a suburb). How about you compared POLY, City, and School for the Arts with DC's three best public high school options. Baltimore comes out a bit ahead, imo. Also, there are some people who don't want to live in a faux "urban" town center in the suburbs with a bunch of big box stores an no character or sense of place, but can't afford a $1.25M row house. Canton, Federal Hill, Locust Point, Brewer's Hill, Hampden, Wyman Park, Remington, Roland Park, Evergreen, Bolton Hill and a lot of other neighborhoods are walkable to a bunch of interesting restaurants, boutiques, etc. and have their own unique histories, architectural styles and charm. |
Anonymous
Depends on where you live. A neighborhood like Roland Park - which is a huge and makes up probably 1,000+ acres - has had one murder in the past 20+ years. The one murder that did happen (in 2017) was such a big deal that they called out the entire police academy to canvas for evidence the day after. |
Anonymous
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https://www.redfin.com/MD/Baltimore/15-Edgevale-Rd-21210/home/11163326
https://www.redfin.com/MD/Baltimore/5708-Kenmore-Rd-21210/home/11161114 https://www.redfin.com/MD/Baltimore/213-Tuscany-Rd-21210/home/10837335 Except for the first one (at $620,000) all of these are in OPs budget and are zoned for a public elementary/middle school that's a 8/10 on Great Schools. The crime is on par with one of the SFH neighborhoods in NW DC. |
Anonymous
| I'd seriously consider Homeland/Roland Park. Much more affordable and the houses are comparable to Chevy Chase - at 1/3 the cost. Of course there are other costs, but I'd move there in a minute if I could get a job up there or if I could only commute 2x/week. We'd be going public, but privates are very popular. |
Anonymous
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OP, as you can infer from the posts, Baltimore is a complicated topic. Some people thoroughly hate the city and want nothing to do with it but continually bash the persistent crime problems (fair enough) but there are also wonderful things about Baltimore and if you carefully place yourself in the right areas with the right schools, Baltimore can be a great experience. But it does require some persistence and being careful where you live and strategizing when it comes to schools. There are great public schools in Baltimore but you can count them on one hand, for example. And it does come down to what kind of lifestyle you want and your tolerance for certain kinds of environments. For example, the two premier high schools in Baltimore are City College and Polytechnic Institute, which have old histories and were major powerhouses - in the past. Today, no, statistically speaking, they can't be compared to the premier public high schools in key DC suburbs if you only look at test scores and % going to college. But both City and Poly still have excellent programs within the larger school and specialized tracks and still place graduates into top colleges across the country. So they are high schools you can still "work" with from that perspective. I'm a double Ivy graduate, a product of the Baltimore private schools, but if my kids wanted to go to the IB program at City College, I'd have confidence in it. There are more and more people with faith in the Baltimore public schools today than 20 years ago and more people are going through Roland Park/Mount Washington elementary schools, middle schools, then City College/Poly, including families that could afford private schools. And, of course, School for the Arts is one of the premier art schools in the whole country. It's fabulous, if you get in (you do need to demonstrate real artistic talent).
Regarding commuting, many people commute to the DC area from Baltimore. It is a trade off but if you only have to go into DC twice a week and work from home the other three days, it's eminently doable. You can catch up on emails while taking the MARC, or use that time to relax with a book. It's not perfect, but commutes are still long within the DC area. One area of Baltimore I do like is Catonsville, a suburb off the southwestern corner of Baltimore (it's in Baltimore County, not the city). Of all the suburbs in the Baltimore or DC area, Catonsville comes closest to an old fashioned small town. It's not fancy, like a real small town, and it has a main street with individual shops and chains, a mixture of housing stock from graceful old houses on large lots on tree lined streets, to new developments and 1950s rowhouses and split levels. The schools do vary, some elementary schools are ok, others are excellent, and they all feed into Catonsville High School, which I consider a great school. The high school is both racially and economically diverse, with upper middle class kids going to school with working class kids and I've always been impressed with kids from Catonsville. They're normal kids. Not rich public school or private school kids, but normal kids, and they go to all kinds of colleges from the Ivies to UMBC next door to community colleges. As a bonus, Catonsville has Route 40 nearby, which probably has the largest concentration of "ethnic" eateries in the Baltimore area, as well as several Asian supermarkets. Commuting to DC is very feasible from Catonsville, both by car and by MARC. Now, crime is certainly a problematic issue in Baltimore. But it's still very segregated. Some areas have virtually no crime, and 90+% of the crime is still concentrated in several distinct parts of the city. There's a lot of hand-wringing over it and there has been some spill over into the nicer parts of the city. I don't know what the future brings, nor does anyone, but many people continue to live in lovely areas completely unaffected by the crime problems and there's still tons of money being poured into redevelopment of various neighborhoods. For some people that doesn't matter, proximity to high crime areas still scares them off and they want nothing to do with a dysfunctional city with persistent problems (fair enough, I can understand it myself). You just need to be aware of this, Baltimore is not for everyone). And of course there is the tax issue, property taxes are very high compared to the surrounding suburbs. |
Anonymous
Wilson is far superior to anything in Baltimore. It isn't even close. Have you ever stepped foot on the Poly campus? |
Anonymous
I actually live and work in Baltimore -- the crime is actually every where now. Perhaps you missed the fact that we had 300 murders this year, and that was the most, per capita, in the entire history of the city. Crime of every type is up in every neighborhood in the city, substantially. People are getting mugged near the train station, down town -- there was even a murder a few weeks ago in South Baltimore, traditionally one of the safest neighborhoods in the city. BTW, whomever said the MARC is barely ever late is off their rocker. I did this commute for 2 years and the MARC is frequently late -- some reasons given by MTA -- it's too cold, it's too snowy, derailed freight train, person stuck by train, too many leaves on the train, and of course, no excuse at all. |
Anonymous
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My colleagues do it and they're fine.
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