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[quote=Anonymous]Hi OP -- An early welcome to the area.

My husband and I live in Fairfax City with our almost-5-YO twin daughters.  If your husband will be teaching at GMU, I highly recommend buying or renting a house close to campus, as traffic is indeed bad at times.

We have been in Fairfax City for about 3.5 years.  I commute to DC, my husband stays at home.  There are walkable parts of the downtown, but it is VERY different than NYC and definitely qualifies as suburbia.  My husband grew up in Northern Virginia, and we moved to Virginia from a liberal area of Montgomery County when we were priced out of the housing market there.  Please be aware that Virginia is a definite purple state with some deep red pockets, so the politics might be different than you are used to, if that matters to you.  People tend to be very friendly, and the feel is more lad back than some other areas in Northern Virginia.  You also can buy much more house in Fairfax City than in some other areas -- our 3 bedroom, 3-bath SFH was $500K, and I think you would have a number of options at the $650K price point.  We initially looked in Falls Church City and saw only very small houses in our price range (up to $550K).

Fairfax City schools are strong but not best-of-the-best.  There are two elementary schools, Providence Elementary and Daniels Run Elementary.  Providence has Mandarin instruction and is regarded as the "better" school, but both get a "7" on greatSchools.org.  We are zoned for Daniels Run, which has an environmental science focus.  We have heard good things about Daniels Run under the new principal, and they recently hired more kindergarten teachers to reduce class size.  There also are highly regarded private Catholic schools.

If best-of-the-best schools are your priority, you could probably afford something in the Woodson pyramid.  The Mantua neighborhood is close enough to GMU and zoned for Woodson but, again, this is is definitely a suburban area.[/quote]

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