Anonymous wrote:Our neighbors just sold their detached bungalow for $799K. House couple doors down went for $600K one year before. I would love to live in Cleveland Park near the swim club but alas I am not a lawyer nor did I inherit $$ and DH and I don't do apartments, we are always shlepping outdoor gear like kayaks or muddy coolers on the weekend. One thing I notice about WOTP is that the traffic is horrible. EOTP I can drive downtown via New Hampshire/Sherman in 15 minutes. Also, there are a lot of cute young people moving into the area, seen at the metro stop, as opposed to the shriveled hippies I see most of the time EOTP. Eye candy a definite plus. Lots of neat new restaurants opened along 11th. It is still shooty though.

It's a really good thing you are not going to get old and shriveled yourself, at any point. You should bottle that elixir and market it!

Where are the detached bungalows in Petworth and what is the IB school for the detached 1920s homes in Petworth?

Anonymous wrote:

You make a great point- only issue is- if you want to buy ANYTHING WOTP the park today you have very little choice. Places just don't come up for sale very often- maybe because people like it so much and don't want to leave.

EOTP is the ONLY option for less than $800K- SERIOUSLY!


I agree, I am just disputing the notion that WOTP is far from downtown and akin to living in the suburbs.

NP here. I did the same thing a few hours ago and my post was deleted, I'm pretty sure. Weird.

For the record, no posts from this thread have been deleted. Yours is right here:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/445202.page#6371548

Our neighbors just sold their detached bungalow for $799K. House couple doors down went for $600K one year before. I would love to live in Cleveland Park near the swim club but alas I am not a lawyer nor did I inherit $$ and DH and I don't do apartments, we are always shlepping outdoor gear like kayaks or muddy coolers on the weekend. One thing I notice about WOTP is that the traffic is horrible. EOTP I can drive downtown via New Hampshire/Sherman in 15 minutes. Also, there are a lot of cute young people moving into the area, seen at the metro stop, as opposed to the shriveled hippies I see most of the time EOTP. Eye candy a definite plus. Lots of neat new restaurants opened along 11th. It is still shooty though.

EL Haynes

We live in Petworth and know families at Barnard, Mundo Verde, Inspired Teaching, Yu Ying, Hearst, Stokes, Hyde, CentroNia, DC Bilingual, Cap City, and Maret. Appletree Columbia Heights and Bridges are also popular.

You make a great point- only issue is- if you want to buy ANYTHING WOTP the park today you have very little choice. Places just don't come up for sale very often- maybe because people like it so much and don't want to leave.

EOTP is the ONLY option for less than $800K- SERIOUSLY!


I agree, I am just disputing the notion that WOTP is far from downtown and akin to living in the suburbs.

NP here. I did the same thing a few hours ago and my post was deleted, I'm pretty sure. Weird.

The upper NW = Poolesville posters are just bitter, I think. And don't know any better.

So in the interest of not having THIS post reported and deleted, let me stay on point. I have a school-aged child who spends several days a month in the heart of Petworth and the rest of her time with me in Ward 3. I have what may be a unique experience in this thread.

A huge difference between her time spent at her Petworth house and her time spent in my Ward 3 house is this: she doesn't run around outdoors along Georgia Ave and play and go to the businesses there without an adult. Ever. Nor does she venture over to that park by herself on her bike, ever. She does, however, go about her Ward 3 neighborhood by herself and with friends all the time CVS, grocery store, library, etc. Takeout restaurants.

Her other parent and I are not helicopter parents by any means (or else we wouldn't allow her pretty free reign along Connecticut Ave). Stray bullets, however, are our limit. Hopefully, in time, Petworth and similarly evolving neighborhoods will have less violent crime (assaults, armed robberies). Not stolen bikes, but assaults.

What is 14th Street Heights? I always thought the neighborhood around Hamilton Park was called 16th Street Heights? 75% of kids in Ward 4 go to schools outside of their neighborhood school that they are IB to. So that includes Petworth and 16th Street Heights and Crestwood etc. Kids in 16th Street Heights go to over 60 different schools...private, charter and OOB

Op, we are in 14th st heights (14th/Colorado) and we are happy at Haynes. It is a diverse school, but lots of kids from the surrounding areas--a few (very few) from WOTP, some mt pleasant/crestwood, a lot from petworth and east of petworth/south of petworth.

I'm the poster whose kid goes to the Washington International School. We were also on the cutting edge of the gentrification so that Powell and Raymond were not really options. If I were having a baby now, the calculus might be different.

Anonymous wrote:Our elementary school child goes to the Washington International School. We have owned our house in Petworth for nearly fourteen years. We are never moving.

There's some logic in this. If you've lived in Petworth that long, your mortgage is probably a pittance. So even though you pay $3k a month for your kid to go to school...you'd pay more than that in a mortgage to guarantee him a spot at a (not quite) equivalent public school in DC.

Our elementary school child goes to the Washington International School. We have owned our house in Petworth for nearly fourteen years. We are never moving.

Here's a nice home just around the corner from ours. Our IB school is Trusedell, but we attend Haynes.

http://reishmanrealestate.com/featured-property/4808-7th-st-nw/

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Anonymous wrote:Just FYI for those saying "why not just buy in Glover Park" - you haven't bought recently. There are no 3 bedroom condos in Glover Park (or really, EOTP period that doesn't need extensive renovation costing 100k +) that are under 750K, except for a handful that have HOA fees of over $800/month. There are plenty of renovated condos, and a number of rowhomes that don't need more than 30-40K of renovation, in Petworth for under 750K.

You can't buy a split/converted to condo bay-front rowhouse in Bloomingdale for less than $575K, and that's for the lower half. The top two floors will easily be $800K.

Nobody buys boutique housing at these prices and expects to also raise children in that space.

WotP might as well be the suburbs. It's boring. It's over. It's too far from downtown. It's Rockthesda. Why pay to live in DC if you can't actually get there without a car?

Yeah, whatever. I live WOTP and have a 7 minute walk to the red line and 4 stops to downtown. It takes my friends in Petworth/16th Street twice as long to get to work as I do. We can get anywhere without a car. We live within easy walking distance of 2 grocery stores, 2 farmers markets, my bank, a library, a movie theater, a toy store, my dentist, my kids' dentist, my kids' pediatrician, playgrounds, the zoo, Rock Creek Park, and of course, all three of my kids' current and future schools.

What are we missing? Cool restaurants and hipsters. We can live with that. It's a 15-minute Uber ride on the weekends to Coolsville.

You can choose not to live WOTP, but to say it's not convenient/walkable is ridiculous. And no, I don't live in a million dollar house. Many of my friends EOTP paid more for their house than we did.

You can't live WotP in a house like a Shaw rowhouse without having spent well over a million (unless you live in a ratbox). The houses aren't that different, it's the access to schools. So let's not play pretend.

I am not pretending. I live WOTP in a side-by-side duplex purchased 3 years ago for just under $800k. It has 3 BRs, 3 baths, and a semi-finished basement. I know there are not an abundance of houses in this price range WOTP, but they do exist and I live in one. I have not seen a rat since I left my Adams Morgan condo.

Recently fully renovated? By that I mean new electrical / plumbing / central AC, not just fresh paint and a crappy addition on the back.

In Petworth, that $$ would get you a top of the line renovation. If you got a fully renovated place, that's a steal, but not common.

Not "recently" fully renovated but new stuff within the last 10 years, and yes central A/C. I certainly don't think it's common and I'm sure I could have gotten a nicer renovated place in Petworth, but my husband's office is in Bethesda and mine is downtown so we were looking for places with an easy red line commute. Believe me, I feel lucky that we found a place we could afford but I will also say that no houses on my block sold for over a million dollars since I've live here. The are more like $800-900k.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just FYI for those saying "why not just buy in Glover Park" - you haven't bought recently. There are no 3 bedroom condos in Glover Park (or really, EOTP period that doesn't need extensive renovation costing 100k +) that are under 750K, except for a handful that have HOA fees of over $800/month. There are plenty of renovated condos, and a number of rowhomes that don't need more than 30-40K of renovation, in Petworth for under 750K.

You can't buy a split/converted to condo bay-front rowhouse in Bloomingdale for less than $575K, and that's for the lower half. The top two floors will easily be $800K.

Nobody buys boutique housing at these prices and expects to also raise children in that space.

WotP might as well be the suburbs. It's boring. It's over. It's too far from downtown. It's Rockthesda. Why pay to live in DC if you can't actually get there without a car?

Yeah, whatever. I live WOTP and have a 7 minute walk to the red line and 4 stops to downtown. It takes my friends in Petworth/16th Street twice as long to get to work as I do. We can get anywhere without a car. We live within easy walking distance of 2 grocery stores, 2 farmers markets, my bank, a library, a movie theater, a toy store, my dentist, my kids' dentist, my kids' pediatrician, playgrounds, the zoo, Rock Creek Park, and of course, all three of my kids' current and future schools.

What are we missing? Cool restaurants and hipsters. We can live with that. It's a 15-minute Uber ride on the weekends to Coolsville.

You can choose not to live WOTP, but to say it's not convenient/walkable is ridiculous. And no, I don't live in a million dollar house. Many of my friends EOTP paid more for their house than we did.

You can't live WotP in a house like a Shaw rowhouse without having spent well over a million (unless you live in a ratbox). The houses aren't that different, it's the access to schools. So let's not play pretend.

I am not pretending. I live WOTP in a side-by-side duplex purchased 3 years ago for just under $800k. It has 3 BRs, 3 baths, and a semi-finished basement. I know there are not an abundance of houses in this price range WOTP, but they do exist and I live in one. I have not seen a rat since I left my Adams Morgan condo.

Recently fully renovated? By that I mean new electrical / plumbing / central AC, not just fresh paint and a crappy addition on the back.

In Petworth, that $$ would get you a top of the line renovation. If you got a fully renovated place, that's a steal, but not common.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just FYI for those saying "why not just buy in Glover Park" - you haven't bought recently. There are no 3 bedroom condos in Glover Park (or really, EOTP period that doesn't need extensive renovation costing 100k +) that are under 750K, except for a handful that have HOA fees of over $800/month. There are plenty of renovated condos, and a number of rowhomes that don't need more than 30-40K of renovation, in Petworth for under 750K.

You can't buy a split/converted to condo bay-front rowhouse in Bloomingdale for less than $575K, and that's for the lower half. The top two floors will easily be $800K.

Nobody buys boutique housing at these prices and expects to also raise children in that space.

WotP might as well be the suburbs. It's boring. It's over. It's too far from downtown. It's Rockthesda. Why pay to live in DC if you can't actually get there without a car?

Yeah, whatever. I live WOTP and have a 7 minute walk to the red line and 4 stops to downtown. It takes my friends in Petworth/16th Street twice as long to get to work as I do. We can get anywhere without a car. We live within easy walking distance of 2 grocery stores, 2 farmers markets, my bank, a library, a movie theater, a toy store, my dentist, my kids' dentist, my kids' pediatrician, playgrounds, the zoo, Rock Creek Park, and of course, all three of my kids' current and future schools.

What are we missing? Cool restaurants and hipsters. We can live with that. It's a 15-minute Uber ride on the weekends to Coolsville.

You can choose not to live WOTP, but to say it's not convenient/walkable is ridiculous. And no, I don't live in a million dollar house. Many of my friends EOTP paid more for their house than we did.

You can't live WotP in a house like a Shaw rowhouse without having spent well over a million (unless you live in a ratbox). The houses aren't that different, it's the access to schools. So let's not play pretend.

I agree to some extent. You can certainly get a non-ratbox rowhouse WOTP for under a million. But not under 700k. For the price, you're getting a lot less quality or space or both. However, in addition to the schools, you're also buying into a lot less crime and a different SES status for your neighbors. We really love our house and neighbors in Petworth, and it's changed significantly in the last 6 years - but there's still dealing, still robberies, still lots of trash and broken bottles littering the streets, and still lots of elementary school kids freely using language on par with Lil Wayne lyrics without anyone blinking. Sigh.