Move to Baltimore or Bethesda??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole post sounds so preposterous that I suspect it's completely made up.

I want to have my husband commute for 3 to 4 hours every single day so I can hang out by myself in my pretty Victorian OR we could live in Bethesda (but not Rockville, no no no way we could live 2 miles further up the road).

I totally agree.

[Anonymous]

"$$ does not buy happiness. There are a lot of unhappy ppl in this town! Don't get me wrong, we have lovely friends here...but everything is about appearances. On a whole, people are just different in Baltimore."

OH YEAH! The locals will be jumping on this thread any minute now. I can almost hear the witches cackling: "It's all about me, me, me...."

[Anonymous]

This is a very personal decision.

I already know that a long commute is a deal-breaker for me now that I have kids. As it is I drive 35 mins to work in the morn and usually 45-60 mins in the evening.

Before-kids I used to have a one hour commute each way. I cannot go back to that. In fact, my next residential and/or professional move will be motivated in part by a desire to shorten my commuting time.

[Anonymous]

OP. Thanks for all your replies. They are very helpful. DH read this thread and is starting to remember what he hated about his 90 minute commute when we lived in CT. He only did it for a year, so that may color his recollection.

21:15 - Where did you move to, how long did you live there, and where did you move back to? How long is your commute now? How did you feel about giving up the amazing house, and do you ever regret it?

Y'all are confirming my gut feeling about the feasibility of DH doing the long commute. Rats. I've been dreaming about an affordable house with a big yard. I'm going to go out and buy a lottery ticket....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:His office is near the White House. He has a 25 min commute now. It would stretch to 90 plus minutes if we moved to Baltimore. If we move to Bethesda, he'd have about a 40 minute commute.

Why not somewhere in between?

I live near Annapolis and commute to capitol hill (though I work 10-6, so avoid much of the morning rush...but h probably could if he went in early as well) and it takes me about 35-40 mins to get there. 20 to get to the metro station.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Y'all are confirming my gut feeling about the feasibility of DH doing the long commute. Rats. I've been dreaming about an affordable house with a big yard. I'm going to go out and buy a lottery ticket....

You sound like a little spoiled brat, you know. You can do what all the rest of us do: Move to Takoma Park or Rockville, or Greenbelt or Hyattsville, or Silver Spring. You can drive your kid the whopping three miles over to Bethesda for school if need be. Good lord, if I had $600K to spend on a house, I think I would be in heaven. And yes, I send my kids to a special private school and would be willing to drive a little bit to get them there.

[Anonymous]

You can have my absolutely lovely house in close-in Silver Spring with fenced yard and much shorter commute for $450k and make it drop-dead gorgeous and perfect with a small addition for another $50k. You are dying to buy mine, of course, but there are tons of great opportunities to be in the right house in a cute neighborhood with a more manageable commute. With kids in private school, you don't even need to buy for school district. I'm from B-More and I would say to move there in a heartbeat if you can get jobs there. But the "land of pleasant living" mystique, while absolutely true, does not apply to people on a DC career track with a hellish commute.

Sounds like you need a good realtor to drive you around a bunch of neighborhoods and help get you into a house that you can be happy in. I am not a realtor but if you look on this board you will see many testimonials about great realtors in the area.

[Anonymous]

OP - assume you are never going back to work (or never planning to anyway)? Because that is obviously a factor too - if you plan to work when both kids are in middle school or whatever you should think about having both parents have a long commute.

I too am puzzled why you wouldn't look at an area like Silver Spring (near downtown Silver Spring - not way out). In my mind the only potential drawback is middle and high schools and if you are doing private anyway, that doesn't matter. We have a great house in a great neighborhood and are adding on to get the space we want. You can do a lot in SS with 600K. Buy a 500K house and renovate.

[Anonymous]

I don't necessarily think the post is fake, I just think that the OP really wants to live in a beautiful house in Baltimore and hadn't thought through the consequences (husband's long commute and never seeing him).

I do also wonder why it's only Bethesda or Baltimore, and maybe she can elaborate more. Like one of the PPs mentioned, Rockville is a couple miles from Bethesda, would not greatly lengthen the commute, and you'd probably find a bigger house than in Bethesda, so why is that ruled out?

[Anonymous]

00:11 Where do you live near Annapolis? Do you find the commute bearable? It sounds like it's more than an hour for you. And where do your kids go to school? Are there any decent public schools in Annapolis proper?

10:29. Actually, we'd be in Baltimore right now were it not for this commute issue. For family reasons I can't go into, we have to be in proximity to certain places. Baltimore and Bethesda (closer in) will work.

We've driven around with realtors, all over everywhere.

I posted because I wanted to hear from people who have lived this commute. I'm happy to hear from some folks that it's killed your quality of life. That's useful information.

We have a bunch of kids, and we're crammed like sardines in our house. It's extremely stressful not to have enough privacy or personal space. That has health consequences too. That's why Baltimore is so appealing.

[Anonymous]

The Baltimore v. Bethesda thing is odd.

[Anonymous]

OP - sounds like you have unique circumstances (foster kids? special needs kids?) that are dictating your requirements. If you want to live in Baltimore, why doesn't your husband look for a job there?

[Anonymous]

I posted earlier about having commuted from Baltimore. OP, I understand needing more space. I went nuts every winter in our tiny house with two small kids, even knowing other people were making do in smaller places with more kids. For some people space is necessary for happiness, and DH and I are like that. We both do artistic work in addition to our day jobs and it's hard to work well without a good space. We also had long commutes in different directions, complicated school issues, a limited budget, and, for one of us, a job which required residency in a certain jurisdiction. We considered all options intensively and could not find a good solution.

At that point you either have to change your requirements or widen your options. We decided to job-search outside the DC region and we ended up moving to Philadelphia, where we're able to make our commute/school/job/space issues work. It was an expensive decision but I have no regrets.