Flower Valley in Rockville

[Anonymous]

Hi, does anyone live in the Flower Valley neighborhood in Rockville or know anyone who does? We are highly considering moving there and would love to hear aby feedback anyone has. Please let me know how you like it or if there is anything you dont like about it. Thanks so much in advance!

[Anonymous]

I know of one family in that area. They belong to the country club in that neighborhood (cannot recall the name) and love their neighborhood and all the friends they made at the club. That said, traffic on Norbeck Road is hellish every morning, so depending on where you work, you may need to consider that aspect.

[Anonymous]

It's a bad commute to DC

[Anonymous]

I am guessing 50 lights to get downtown. 75? Not sure. You would have to take metro. But I was just telling someone who lives there that it is a pocket there.

[Anonymous]

nice pocket

[Anonymous]

The ICC can get you to the Metro in 15 minutes. Where do you work. I know lots of families that live there and love it but I don't know any that work downtown.

Most of the people I know belong to Manor and send their kids to Catholic school or SSFS.

[Anonymous]

I live in FV. I don't work downtown but sometimes have to go there for work. I think driving everyday would be difficult. You don't need to use the ICC to get to the metro. You have access to either Rockville or Glenmont depending on where you are going.

I have kids but they are not yet school age. Most people seem to like FVES. Wood MS and Rockville HS are pretty diverse.

It is a nice neighborhood and I think reasonably priced for what you get.

Manor Country Club and Manor Woods are neighborhoods across the street. Manor Woods is also a nice neighborhood where houses are a little less expensive than FV. I don't know too many people who belong to MCC. I think that is more people who live in MCC, which is considerably more expensive. I would not consider MCC unless you really want to live in a country club. You would pay $200-$300K more for an equivalent house to FV but feed into the same schools. You are paying a premium for living in a country club.

[Anonymous]

Flower Valley is a pretty nice neighborhood.

Know people that grew up there and said they would move back if they still lived in the area. Their description was that they liked the tree lined street neighborhood feel. So maybe the kind of place for people that are looking for nice homes with big yards, etc.

And know other people that currently live there and considered it when looking in the area. I've heard people that live outside of Flower Valley in that area refer it to "where the rich people live".

I do know some people that commuted downtown from there. I think they'd either take the Rockville or Glenmont stations depending on what side of DC they had to go on. On this board some people mentioned going to Twinbrook metro from that area. It wasn't an ideal commute but I'm sure it's probably the same if they went from Germantown or any of the parts that are further out.

It's convenient to the Aspen Hill area, Olney and Howard County if you do things in those areas and want to live in Montgomery County. It's not that close to the 270/495, so you'd take a lot of local roads. ie 28/198 to go east towards Howard County or PG County. (you can take the ICC too if it goes towards the area you want to) 97 down towards Silver Spring or Aspen Hill, or Olney the other way.

Some of the negatives for me, which is based off of old information, not being there for a while are that the traffic on Norbeck Road can be really bad. I don't think there are a lot of bus options in there. Maybe if you're willing to walk out to Norbeck Road. And if you're deep in the neighborhood it can be days before they shovel your roads to get out. And it may be house specific but we know one family in there where their FIOS goes out for days. And when FIOS goes out so does their phone line. So there are times when they're snowed in and no one can reach them. (They're older folks who don't keep their cell phones on)

I don't know much about the school there other than the Great Schools ranking. It seems kind of low for what I'd expect for the area, since people describe it the "rich" area. And looking at the service map, it doesn't look like it catches a lot of areas outside of Flower Valley or Manor Lake (which is a nice neighborhood too). Maybe a little bit north of Leisure World, but it doesn't look like that big of an area where I wouldn't think that it would affect the school's ranking in anyway. And granted Great Schools ranking don't mean everything and only reflects test scores. But a lot of people indicate that it correlates with SES. So would've expected it to be higher there.

[Anonymous]

My aunt still lives there. Her house is huge and yard is lovely. Her 3 kids (my cousins-now in their 20s) attended the neighborhood schools and did quite well for themselves. She actually told me that Rockville hs always got the new programs tested there because it was pretty closely matched to the county demographics as a whole. She also said there was a neighborhood parade at least once a year that was tons of fun.

I would love to live in her hood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My aunt still lives there. Her house is huge and yard is lovely. Her 3 kids (my cousins-now in their 20s) attended the neighborhood schools and did quite well for themselves. She actually told me that Rockville hs always got the new programs tested there because it was pretty closely matched to the county demographics as a whole. She also said there was a neighborhood parade at least once a year that was tons of fun.

I would love to live in her hood.

Lol I bet she's talking about the neighborhood street part on Halloween! Good times

[Anonymous]

My realtor, who could live anywhere in Montgomery County, lives there and LOVES it. Young family.

[Anonymous]

We just moved to this neighborhood a couple of months ago from DC. It's been a bit of a transition for us (went from a 2 BR/2BA condo to 2800 sf house with not a small yard). But our son loves it. The neighbors are so nice. Kids out playing, riding bikes all the time. It really feels like a neighborhood. Our son will be going to Barnesley, but a co-worker of mine has kids at Flower Valley and she loves it.

As for the commute to DC - agree that you could take Glenmont, Rockville, or Twinbrook metro. When we first moved, our son was finishing out daycare in DC (Columbia Heights) and it took us about 40 minutes to get from our house to 16th and Irving. The afternoon took as long, sometimes longer.

[Anonymous]

A note to poster about low test scores - a lot of families opt out of testing, so that could have a really big impact on scores. It's a nice school

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much everyone for the detailed responses! This has been really great feedback and we appreciate it! My husband works downtown DC, so he would have to commute. Ive been a little curious about the greatschools ratings but otherwise have really liked the neighborhood feeling during the time we've spent driving around.

[Anonymous]

Beware the commute from that neighborhood into DC. Depending on what part of the city you're going to, it should be about 1 1/2 hours each way by either metro or car (unless you leave before 7 am and after 7 pm).