Reply to Is there a reason real estate has appreciated so much more in VA than MD and DC?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Appreciation rates are similar, although Virginia has slightly outpaced.

Let me just say though that Maryland has miles and miles of just horribly seedy and ugly areas from the Potomac river to Silver Spring, and then Chevy Chase and Bethesda. So it's a lot of poor, and some very, very rich. Virginia has vast swaths of decent upper middle class suburbs. I think in the end the Maryland side has turned into essentially a California like environment.[/quote]

I don't get this. NoVA is full of these charmless commercial strips with a bunch of generic big box stores and fast food places lining a wide road with limited pedestrian infrastructure, surrounded by poorly constructed townhomes and single family homes. Yes there are some more charming areas (Old Town, Falls Church) and thee are neighborhoods with houses that have character (though these are rapidly being bought up and converted to hideous 5 bedroom monstrosities in that weird faux-farmhouse style that don't fit the lot). And you do have some urbanism in Ballston/Courthouse/Rosslyn. But by and large, VA is a bunch of "stroads" (look it up) and Targets with overpriced, poorly-built new builds. It's convenient, but sort of depressing.

MD does have some seedy areas but there are tons of neighborhoods in MoCo outside the super expensive parts that have charm, local business, community gathering places, varied housing stock, real sidewalks, and feel human scaled (and not just designed to move cars around). It's not perfect, but to me it holds a lot more appeal.
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People pay a premium to be AWAY from community gathering places, varied housing stock, public transportation, and other people, in general. It’s what makes them isolated and exclusive, and thus, more expensive with higher appreciation. Even in urban environments, more isolated  = higher prices, even if it’s in the form of a doorman and locked doors.  You can always go to the people if you want, but if you live with the masses, you can’t escape.  Driving means fewer forced interactions with random crazies.[/quote]

That's just... not accurate. As a general rule, the further a home is from other people, the cheaper it is per square foot. You can find expensive houses way out, but they will be huge. In fact a major reason people move further from cities is to be able to afford larger homes. The cost of land close in makes it prohibitively expensive to have a very large home, so they go further out where land is cheaper (because it's so far from everything convenient that people actually want, including their work, schools, parks, grocery stores, public transit, shopping, etc.).

It's true a lot of people prefer driving to public transit in the US. But where are you driving? To places with other people -- work, school, shopping, entertainment. Do you want that to take 2 hours or 30 minutes? Well that's the difference between living in Bethesda versus Front Royal, and that's why Bethesda is way more expensive. Also people in Bethesda at least have the option of taking public transit when traffic is really bad, whereas people who live further out never have that option and neither does anyone else, leading to even worse traffic.

In general, real estate gets more expensive the closer it is to a city center. That's why condos in downtown DC cost as much as large SFHs in the outer suburbs, even though most people would rather live in a SFH than a condo.[/quote]

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