Reply to What $400k Gets You in Baltimore

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[quote=Anonymous](1) What do you do when your kids are out of elementary school? Yes, private schools in Baltimore are cheaper than in DC but they are not free. And property taxes are high and housing does not appreciate the way it does here.

(2) You could stretch this budget a smidge and get a similarly sized condo in DC or close in suburbs, with better MS/HS options, lower taxes, and better likelihood of appreciation.

(3) Roland Park is tricky. There are a lot of genuinely rich people there. Yes, there are MC and UMC families as well, especially as you go south towards Hampden. But it's not an easy neighborhood to just move to out of the blue without a real connection to the city. This is true throughout Baltimore. Unlike DC where people move here from all over all the time, Baltimore has far fewer transplants and a lot of lifers. It can be hard to build community there.

(4) For the people suggesting that if you work remotely much of the time, this is an easy commute to DC, it's not! First off, this house is nowhere near Penn Station, so it's going to take you 20-30 minutes just to get to the train station. Then, while there are a lot of Marc trains daily (though less than pre-Covid), most are locals and take a good hour each way. The train is also not free, and those add up, especially because if you are not commuting daily, the monthly passes just don't make any sense at all. It's a lot of time in transit, especially if you are doing it twice a week. If you have young kids, that's going to feel like an incredibly long day.

I love Baltimore and we've looked at this option a bunch of times, but it's very hard to make it make sense financially. You see the sticker price on houses and think "oh this is so much cheaper, we can buy so much more with our money there." But when you get into nuts and bolts, it only makes sense if you really, really want to live in Baltimore, and most people who really want to be in Baltimore have some kind of history with the city.

Also, if I DID buy in Baltimore, you can do a lot better than this weird small house. It's fine (I don't think it's terrible) but if you are going to buy in Baltimore for the discount, buy something great! There are so many incredibly charming houses there with original details and terrific yards, etc. This house does not cut it, sorry. It will go for asking because of the neighborhod/schools, but the house itself is nothing to get excited about.[/quote]

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