Reply to If you're moving out of the DMV area because of the HCOL

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Reply to "If you're moving out of the DMV area because of the HCOL"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1) Where are you going?
2) What is your HHI in the DMV (and what will it be where you are going)?

[b]By HCOL I really mean real estate.[/b] That is truly the only think here that I think is ridiculous here.  Food is honestly the same here as back home in a relatively lower COL area.[/quote]

Childcare is relatively high here too, although lower cost options do exist.  But I think childcare cost here are among the highest in the country.[/quote]

I also think form a quality of life perspective, it's the cost of childcare plus its scarcity. When I speak to friends in other cities, even cities where childcare costs just as much as it does here or more (like NYC, San Francisco, LA, Seattle) they are always surprised by the hoops we have to jump through just to get a spot in a daycare. You see that other places but only with certain, very in demand centers that offer special services like bilingual education or that are attached to prestigious institutions. We sat on waitlists for months just to get a spot at a regular, decent daycare that was reasonably close to one of our offices. That's unusual.

There are a lot of things about the DMV that not only cost more, but are more stressful. Services in this area are weirdly limited in ways that you don't run into in other cities, partly because of how many people abandoned the city for the suburbs in the 80s and 90s. DC never really built up its service infrastructure when people started moving back in. We got lots more bars and restaurants, but not necessarily more daycares, dentists, and auto body shops.[/quote]
I think “scarcity” sums it up. That’s exactly how I feel. That scarcity means that people are always competing for limited resources (housing, childcare waiting lists). [/quote]

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