Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised no one has mentioned the obvious yet.
Amazon HQ2.
25,000 new high(ish) paid jobs.
Supply and demand.
Econ 101.
McLean is 12 miles on the GW Parkway from Crystal City.
I have seen people flee DC area I’m droves due to high COL, yet new jobs continue to pop up, maintaining or increasing demand with limited supply.

And a vast majority of them will be completely WFH. 2020 changed everything.

I speak as someone who's helping Amazon fill these positions.

BS. They will not be permanently WFH. That is not their culture AT ALL.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised no one has mentioned the obvious yet.
Amazon HQ2.
25,000 new high(ish) paid jobs.
Supply and demand.
Econ 101.
McLean is 12 miles on the GW Parkway from Crystal City.
I have seen people flee DC area I’m droves due to high COL, yet new jobs continue to pop up, maintaining or increasing demand with limited supply.

And a vast majority of them will be completely WFH. 2020 changed everything.

I speak as someone who's helping Amazon fill these positions.

Amazon does not pay particularly well. I am interviewing in the 300k to 500k range and Amazon does not have jobs like that for most part. When I worked in Investment banking 500k was no big deal and I worked with folks making 7 figures.

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised no one has mentioned the obvious yet.
Amazon HQ2.
25,000 new high(ish) paid jobs.
Supply and demand.
Econ 101.
McLean is 12 miles on the GW Parkway from Crystal City.
I have seen people flee DC area I’m droves due to high COL, yet new jobs continue to pop up, maintaining or increasing demand with limited supply.

And a vast majority of them will be completely WFH. 2020 changed everything.

I speak as someone who's helping Amazon fill these positions.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the obvious yet.
Amazon HQ2.
25,000 new high(ish) paid jobs.
Supply and demand.
Econ 101.
McLean is 12 miles on the GW Parkway from Crystal City.
I have seen people flee DC area I’m droves due to high COL, yet new jobs continue to pop up, maintaining or increasing demand with limited supply.

Anonymous wrote:The $1.5m house on the water poster has got to be a troll. No one in the Maryland exurbs cares this much about DC area housing prices.

If they’re not a troll, then I think it’s someone upset to realize they’re a small fish in a big pond in the DMV. You can tell because (s)he mentions being familiar with the schools from looking at houses here. I get it’s a bit of a shock to realize 1m and even 1.5m doesn’t get the mansion that your childhood self would have envisioned that much money would buy in this area. But any reasonable person understands the value is in the land. Most normal grownups decide whether they want to pay more for location or for a bigger house, and then they go live happily ever after. Some choose the bigger house and then spend their free time read DC-metro real estate boards to insist anyone who made a different decision is miserable.

Forgetting the immature expensive waterfront house tirade, they actually DO kind of have a point. There are other less expensive areas not so far away that offer good and sometimes even higher performing schools with a decent commute to DC, and those areas are also very sought after. The concerns about affordable housing and school equity raised are valid, but implying that outer-burbs don’t also have any issues with affordable housing is dishonest. River Hill and even Davidsonville/Severna Park are very expensive areas to live in compared to the rest of the region and country. Some of the schools in Howard County and Anne Arundel County that the poster mentioned have almost no FARM students at all. B-CC has 12% of its students receiving FARMs, Severna Park only has 4%. I’m familiar with Anne Arundel, and $1.5M is not going to get you something super fancy on the water, not even in Pasadena. The waterfront strip in Anne Arundel County is very rich and exclusive. The people in Severna Park are also notorious for being blatantly racist and classist, it’s not some socio-economically integrated paradise like the poster would have you believe. Severna Park is as NIMBY as NIMBY gets, and you can’t really find any apartments or townhomes in that area. It’s also like 87% white, definitely not a place people send their kids to so they can “experience diversity” LOL.

The $1.5m house on the water poster has got to be a troll. No one in the Maryland exurbs cares this much about DC area housing prices.

If they’re not a troll, then I think it’s someone upset to realize they’re a small fish in a big pond in the DMV. You can tell because (s)he mentions being familiar with the schools from looking at houses here. I get it’s a bit of a shock to realize 1m and even 1.5m doesn’t get the mansion that your childhood self would have envisioned that much money would buy in this area. But any reasonable person understands the value is in the land. Most normal grownups decide whether they want to pay more for location or for a bigger house, and then they go live happily ever after. Some choose the bigger house and then spend their free time read DC-metro real estate boards to insist anyone who made a different decision is miserable.

Boo needs a Xanax as well. . .

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good lord, who has the time to dig up these statistics for school districts they don’t even live in. We get it PP. You have a 1.5m house in the exurbs and send your kids to private school. Please make sure to tell us all that fact over and over again while you disparage schools that your kids don’t even attend.

I’m sure you’d rag on my $1m Arlington house, but I don’t care. I grew up in a big fancy house and it was fine. But we had to get in the car to go everywhere and we were too far from the city to go in very often. My family has chosen walkability (to metro, parks, restaurants, trails, etc.), short commutes, and the ability to go into the city often for date nights, museums, etc. It feels like the best of urban amenities, but with a quiet suburban neighborhood feel. It’s perfect for us. My kids are excelling in school. They will go to HS at Yorktown, which is “only” a 7/10, but there’s so much more to life than fretting over average test scores. Our quality of life here is really great. Sure our house could be fancier, but we are the type of family that likes to get out and about anyway.

I’m glad you found something that works for your family, but you should really sit with yourself and ask why you feel the need to make gross generalizations about people sending their kids to public schools in Northern Va.

It actually only took me less than 10 minutes to find the statistics, and I’m very aware with how the local schools perform given that I was house hunting in the area just a few years ago. Even if they won’t admit it, I don’t think anyone would choose living in a small old house over living in a big house on the water. It’s honestly really disgusting seeing people in this thread say that $1M isn’t a lot of money when most Americans are living in homes that are only worth 15-20% of that much money, and even the average house price in Maryland, the wealthiest state in the country, is only 30% of that. Just 6-7 years ago, the average home price in Bethesda was in the $700k range, and now all of the sudden it is very quickly approaching $1M. How does nobody see a problem with that? People are selling their houses to a generation of new families that are in more debt than any other precious generation for a fraction of what they paid for it, and people are wondering why millennials are struggling! What does it say about America when people have to pay $1M to live in a crummy small house in a 7/10 public school district that is 20-25 minutes from DC with traffic? Only in America do “public schools” even factor into our property values, when they shouldn’t because all public schools should be stellar, regardless of the zip code. Even if it is what it is, people should not be okay/complicit with it. I didn’t move to McLean or Bethesda even though I could have afforded to pay even more for the house I own now and buy an actual luxury house in these areas, because I didn’t want to contribute to the growing problem of housing shortage, especially for the middle and working-class. This housing market is not normal, and even the people living in the area cannot afford their homes and are one financial crisis away from losing their houses. Especially with the economic burden the pandemic has placed upon many people, it’s insane that people think these prices are reasonable. That house’s quality itself screams $400k, and the public schools/location should not value it anymore than $200k higher than that.

I didn’t grow up as well-off as I am now. I grew up upper-middle-class and attended a pretty average public high school, but it seems that a lot of the posters in here are not only affluent themselves, but come from families that were also super well-off. That must be why there’s such a huge lack of self-awareness here. This market should look insane to even people who can afford it.

And again, less families are willing to put up with this. Most people with the money will not buy these houses, and the number of people willing to do so will continue to decrease. I don’t live in the middle of nowhere. Most people I know in the inner burbs aren’t hanging out in DC every weekend anyways. I can easily get to DC in 30 minutes from where I live, and I also have a bus and MARC nearby. I can go to DC to hangout whenever I want, and Downtown Annapolis and a bunch of shopping in Annapolis and Crofton are right next to me. I live in a very nice community and my kids are exposed to people who are less fortunate than them in the greater area in general, so they definitely won’t grow up making ridiculous statements like “$1M is not a lot of money.” Many others are willing to commute for up to an hour.

I don’t have a problem with people living in these houses. I take issue when people act as if these exorbitant house prices are normal, because they’re not, even for the DMV region.

You need to take a seat. You have a major chip on your shoulder.

Anonymous wrote:Good lord, who has the time to dig up these statistics for school districts they don’t even live in. We get it PP. You have a 1.5m house in the exurbs and send your kids to private school. Please make sure to tell us all that fact over and over again while you disparage schools that your kids don’t even attend.

I’m sure you’d rag on my $1m Arlington house, but I don’t care. I grew up in a big fancy house and it was fine. But we had to get in the car to go everywhere and we were too far from the city to go in very often. My family has chosen walkability (to metro, parks, restaurants, trails, etc.), short commutes, and the ability to go into the city often for date nights, museums, etc. It feels like the best of urban amenities, but with a quiet suburban neighborhood feel. It’s perfect for us. My kids are excelling in school. They will go to HS at Yorktown, which is “only” a 7/10, but there’s so much more to life than fretting over average test scores. Our quality of life here is really great. Sure our house could be fancier, but we are the type of family that likes to get out and about anyway.

I’m glad you found something that works for your family, but you should really sit with yourself and ask why you feel the need to make gross generalizations about people sending their kids to public schools in Northern Va.

It actually only took me less than 10 minutes to find the statistics, and I’m very aware with how the local schools perform given that I was house hunting in the area just a few years ago. Even if they won’t admit it, I don’t think anyone would choose living in a small old house over living in a big house on the water. It’s honestly really disgusting seeing people in this thread say that $1M isn’t a lot of money when most Americans are living in homes that are only worth 15-20% of that much money, and even the average house price in Maryland, the wealthiest state in the country, is only 30% of that. Just 6-7 years ago, the average home price in Bethesda was in the $700k range, and now all of the sudden it is very quickly approaching $1M. How does nobody see a problem with that? People are selling their houses to a generation of new families that are in more debt than any other precious generation for a fraction of what they paid for it, and people are wondering why millennials are struggling! What does it say about America when people have to pay $1M to live in a crummy small house in a 7/10 public school district that is 20-25 minutes from DC with traffic? Only in America do “public schools” even factor into our property values, when they shouldn’t because all public schools should be stellar, regardless of the zip code. Even if it is what it is, people should not be okay/complicit with it. I didn’t move to McLean or Bethesda even though I could have afforded to pay even more for the house I own now and buy an actual luxury house in these areas, because I didn’t want to contribute to the growing problem of housing shortage, especially for the middle and working-class. This housing market is not normal, and even the people living in the area cannot afford their homes and are one financial crisis away from losing their houses. Especially with the economic burden the pandemic has placed upon many people, it’s insane that people think these prices are reasonable. That house’s quality itself screams $400k, and the public schools/location should not value it anymore than $200k higher than that.

I didn’t grow up as well-off as I am now. I grew up upper-middle-class and attended a pretty average public high school, but it seems that a lot of the posters in here are not only affluent themselves, but come from families that were also super well-off. That must be why there’s such a huge lack of self-awareness here. This market should look insane to even people who can afford it.

And again, less families are willing to put up with this. Most people with the money will not buy these houses, and the number of people willing to do so will continue to decrease. I don’t live in the middle of nowhere. Most people I know in the inner burbs aren’t hanging out in DC every weekend anyways. I can easily get to DC in 30 minutes from where I live, and I also have a bus and MARC nearby. I can go to DC to hangout whenever I want, and Downtown Annapolis and a bunch of shopping in Annapolis and Crofton are right next to me. I live in a very nice community and my kids are exposed to people who are less fortunate than them in the greater area in general, so they definitely won’t grow up making ridiculous statements like “$1M is not a lot of money.” Many others are willing to commute for up to an hour.

I don’t have a problem with people living in these houses. I take issue when people act as if these exorbitant house prices are normal, because they’re not, even for the DMV region.

Good lord, who has the time to dig up these statistics for school districts they don’t even live in. We get it PP. You have a 1.5m house in the exurbs and send your kids to private school. Please make sure to tell us all that fact over and over again while you disparage schools that your kids don’t even attend.

I’m sure you’d rag on my $1m Arlington house, but I don’t care. I grew up in a big fancy house and it was fine. But we had to get in the car to go everywhere and we were too far from the city to go in very often. My family has chosen walkability (to metro, parks, restaurants, trails, etc.), short commutes, and the ability to go into the city often for date nights, museums, etc. It feels like the best of urban amenities, but with a quiet suburban neighborhood feel. It’s perfect for us. My kids are excelling in school. They will go to HS at Yorktown, which is “only” a 7/10, but there’s so much more to life than fretting over average test scores. Our quality of life here is really great. Sure our house could be fancier, but we are the type of family that likes to get out and about anyway.

I’m glad you found something that works for your family, but you should really sit with yourself and ask why you feel the need to make gross generalizations about people sending their kids to public schools in Northern Va.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moco resident here. NAEP scores for VA 4th in the Nation. MD scores on NAEP in the 30’s. Where are you getting that MoCo standards are somehow hirer? Oh Derek Turner? (MCPS PR rep) More than half of MCPS 4th graders can’t read at grade level. (Show me 4th grades scores and I’ll show you the number of future college graduates) Just because Maryland and MCPS outspends the country on education doesn’t mean a great education. So tired of MCPS spin in particular.

Their test scores are lower because their standardized exams are more rigorous and they keep changing. HSA, PARCC, MCAP, etc. it’s hard to compare VS schools with MD schools, because they’re being measured using different standardized exams, but it’s certainly not as hard to be the number 3 school in VS as much as it is to be the number 3 school in Maryland. Maryland has a significantly larger portion of higher performing high schools that compete with each other, VA doesn’t.

This is really unconvincing.

There is no single magnet in MD that serves as many top-performing kids as TJ. That's why VA has (for now) the top ranked HS in the country and the top-ranked school in MD (Poolesville) is #90, according to US News.

If Fairfax switches to a lottery for TJ, and more of the higher-performing kids end up at their base schools, VA will no longer have the #1 school in the country, but its top neighborhood schools will be ranked higher. Even under the current system for TJ, Langley and McLean HS in NoVa had more National Merit Semifinalists for the Class of 2021 than either B-CC and Walt Whitman, with the same cut-off (South River HS in Anne Arundel did not have any). Howard County has one powerhouse (Centennial HS), but again the top neighborhood high schools in NoVa would be on par with Centennial if they weren't losing as many kids to TJ.

PP seems to be committed to the idea that the outer suburbs have the best schools and offer the most value for the money, but they are less convenient for most commuters and the schools aren't clearly better, even when they are less diverse. McLean HS, for example, has more low-income kids than South River HS, and yet the overall US News ranking (98.67) is higher than at South River (94.03).

TJ is an outlier. The magnets in Maryland are housed at mainstream high schools and share a school with general-ed students, whereas TJ is entirely dedicated as a magnet school.

Also, using National Merit Semifinalists is ridiculous because there’s some years where some schools have 10 and the next year they will only have 3. In one of the earlier 2010 years, South River had a lot, and two of them made it into the finalist round and got selected. Walt Whitman only had 9 for 2021, even though they had 13 for 2020. The only metric used for National Merit Finalist is PSAT scores, and of all the standardized tests out there, SATs and PSATs are the most heavily correlated with SES. South River HS students are on average not as high SES as students at schools in inner burbs. The bulk of South River students are split evenly between affluent/upper-middle-class/middle-class. At McLean, there are hardly any middle-class students, it’s almost exclusively affluent kids. Of course rich and privileged McLean kids, who are getting private tutoring and test prep, are getting best test scores, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the school itself. It makes sense that the school with less affluent students will have less National Merit Semifinalists, especially considering that a large percentage of the affluence that resides in South River’s attendance area is shipped off to private schools (much like in other AA County feeders as well). Comparing schools in different states is challenging, but it is a fact that when you take NoVa schools out of the equation, VA schools are not that competitive. Even looking at your own metric, far less high schools in VA were represented than in MD in the NMSF. 60% of this year’s Semifinalists were from TJ. VA kids have far less competition when it comes to statewide rankings, national merit, etc. using some bogus USNWR report that is subjective is useless. Plenty of MoCo W schools weren’t even ranked at all by them some years. There has been years when South River (excluding charters) was in the top 10 in MD.

Let’s consider the stats:

- Severna Park HS: 50% of students taking AP classes; South River HS: 50% of students taking an AP class; McLean: 47% taking an AP class
- Severna Park HS: 39% of students taking advanced math; South River HS: 34% of students taking advanced math; McLean HS: 28% of students taking advanced math
- Severna Park HS: 2% inexperienced teachers; South River HS: 7% inexperienced teachers; McLean HS: 10% inexperienced teachers
- Severna Park HS: 30 AP courses; South River HS: 25 AP courses; McLean HS: 24 AP classes.

McLean has more inexperienced teachers, less AP classes, less kids in AP classes, and a similar proportion of kids taking advanced math, despite having a student body that’s significantly higher SES than SR/SP. McLean has a median household income of $190,009; Severna Park is $139,754; South River attendance area includes Davidsonville ($159,688), Edgewater ($86,586), Riva ($126,875), and Crofton ($120,462). That doesn’t even account for the fact that much of the wealthy in the South River district opt for private schools. Most of the kids in SR are nowhere near as wealthy as kids in McLean, yet they have a public school with more APs, more experienced teachers, and more kids in advanced classes. McLean truly must be a shithole of a public school if it’s that wealthy and can’t even outpace an upper-middle-class school in Anne Arundel County. I can trust that if I send my daughter to South River and do what other wealthy parents do (private tutoring/test prep), she will likely come out even better than she would at McLean, because she’d be going to a school with more APs and better teachers. If more wealthy families in the area were sending their kids to South River, McLean would look even worse.

You comment regarding Howard County schools is ignorant. Centennial the only powerhouse? Lol. River Hill, Marriotts Ridge, and even Atholton High School outpaces Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Thomas S. Wootton. I could afford a luxury $1.5M house in all those school districts and within a very good distance from DC/public transportation (excluding Marriotts Ridge).

2020 Semifinalists:

Winston Churchill HS (Montgomery County: 17
Marriotts Ridge HS (Howard County): 15
Langley HS (Fairfax County)/Walt Whitman HS (Montgomery County) *tie*: 13
River Hill HS (Howard County): 12
McLean HS (Fairfax County): 11
Atholton HS/Centennial HS (Howard County) *tie*: 9
Thomas S. Wootton HS (Montgomery County): 7
Howard HS (Howard County): 6
Mount Hebron HS (Howard County)/Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS (Montgomery County) *tie*: 5
Walter Johnson HS (Montgomery County): 4

Some of the above HoCo schools are mainstream public schools with no magnets and with significantly lower SES (Atholton, Howard, Mount Hebron) than many of the MoCo schools they’re trampling.

It’s not about looking for a “good school” within good commuting distance from DC or access to transportation to it for DCUM. They are only looking for living in an area with no race other than white and Asian people, no neighbors with anything less than a masters degree, and no neighbors with an income less than $250,000. That’s the only reason someone would pay $1.5M to live in such a fugly house in such a fugly neighborhood, with pretty mediocre public schools when you compare the student SES with the academic performance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moco resident here. NAEP scores for VA 4th in the Nation. MD scores on NAEP in the 30’s. Where are you getting that MoCo standards are somehow hirer? Oh Derek Turner? (MCPS PR rep) More than half of MCPS 4th graders can’t read at grade level. (Show me 4th grades scores and I’ll show you the number of future college graduates) Just because Maryland and MCPS outspends the country on education doesn’t mean a great education. So tired of MCPS spin in particular.

Their test scores are lower because their standardized exams are more rigorous and they keep changing. HSA, PARCC, MCAP, etc. it’s hard to compare VS schools with MD schools, because they’re being measured using different standardized exams, but it’s certainly not as hard to be the number 3 school in VS as much as it is to be the number 3 school in Maryland. Maryland has a significantly larger portion of higher performing high schools that compete with each other, VA doesn’t.

This is really unconvincing.

There is no single magnet in MD that serves as many top-performing kids as TJ. That's why VA has (for now) the top ranked HS in the country and the top-ranked school in MD (Poolesville) is #90, according to US News.

If Fairfax switches to a lottery for TJ, and more of the higher-performing kids end up at their base schools, VA will no longer have the #1 school in the country, but its top neighborhood schools will be ranked higher. Even under the current system for TJ, Langley and McLean HS in NoVa had more National Merit Semifinalists for the Class of 2021 than either B-CC and Walt Whitman, with the same cut-off (South River HS in Anne Arundel did not have any). Howard County has one powerhouse (Centennial HS), but again the top neighborhood high schools in NoVa would be on par with Centennial if they weren't losing as many kids to TJ.

PP seems to be committed to the idea that the outer suburbs have the best schools and offer the most value for the money, but they are less convenient for most commuters and the schools aren't clearly better, even when they are less diverse. McLean HS, for example, has more low-income kids than South River HS, and yet the overall US News ranking (98.67) is higher than at South River (94.03).

Way to derail a thread! What exactly is your problem, the two that are going nuts here?
How about this upper Moco has gone nuts! Houses in Olney and Brookeville have gone crazy as well! Selling for 800K left and right. Small houses that were under 500K are now selling for closer to 600K. New construction in Laytonsville is 1m, nothing really decent below 800k. Clarksburg's new NV homes are over 800K. Why do you think a shack in McLane at a paltry 1m is overpriced? Because you are not familiar with real estate in the DMV??

Holy crap.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is McLean. Even if not zoned for Langley HS, this school pyramid is good enough to justify a premium. 1M seems about right.

Lmao no it doesn’t. Absolutely no public school justifies that price for that house, get real. McLean High is only a 7/10 anyways

It’s regularly rated the #3 or #2 high school in Virginia.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/virginia/rankings

And of course the prices reflect the location as well as the schools.

Whatever. Nothing will justify living in this $1M shitshack in a 7/10 school district, living a miserable and depressed lifestyle. Private schools are a thing, and anyone able to afford a million dollar house can certainly afford a private education that is significantly better than a 7/10 school district. This oversaturated real estate market is not going to last very long, especially with COVID permanently changing the nature of jobs. It’s so expensive right now because the inventory is low, but eventually these shitshacks will depreciate to what they’re actually worth...shit.

Wow, you're just a miserable b*tch.

I’m not the one becoming a slave to the real estate market, choosing to live in a $1M shitshack for some PUBLIC schools, and especially not for schools that are rated a 7/10 and not even remotely worth it, so no....Nobody with that kind of money in their right mind would buy that house for $1M. I wouldn’t even pay $1M for a house like that if it put me in a W school in MoCo either. I chose to buy an expensive house that actually looks like one, is on the water, and a decent commuting distance from my job. My kids go to a private school that is much better than McLean or any other public school will ever aspire to be, and my neighbors and I laugh at real estate market assk***ers who pay $1M for shitshack for some crummy PUBLIC schools, absolutely pathetic. Those are the people who are truly miserable.

You sound extremely happy with your choices ranting and raving at 1:52AM on a Sunday morning.

Maybe you need to talk to your doctor about switching up your meds.

And you must be a loser if the first thing you do on your Sunday morning is check DCUM searching for validation in your decision to buy a shitshack.

My point isn’t that this neighborhood doesn’t have certain amenities, just that they’re not worth that price tag. My point is that someone making a $1M+ decision doesn’t care about the public schools, they have options for private school. There are plenty of rich people living in school clusters that perform badly (i.e. Annapolis HS), and it’s because there’s no shortage of private schools in the DMV, and they’re way better than the poo-blic schools in McLean anyways. People are willing to commute to work for up to an hour, especially if they only have to go to DC a few times a week (and a lot of jobs are permanently changing to hybrid or even fully virtual because of COVID). It’s dangerous and financially irresponsible for someone to pay $1.5M for a house like that, because there’s a good chance that the new nature of jobs will significantly impact property values in the near future, once the market/inventory evens out again. There’s a reason people in MoCo and DC are moving up to Frederick at high rates. There’s a reason that San Francisco is seeing one of the highest rates of people moving out of the city. It’s because people are only willing to put up with ridiculous real estate prices for so long before they begin to question why living in said area is even worth it in the first place, and after they make the realization that it’s not worth it to live in a shitshack, they being leaving in large numbers. Turns out that if people have the choice, they prefer living near nature and in a nice house/neighborhood rather than living in a shitshack that was built for the middle-class and wasn’t even intended for their income-bracket. Weird huh? Besides, traffic congestion is such a huge problem in and around the beltway that living a bit out doesn’t add a significant amount of time to someone’s commute. You aren’t realizing that people making $1M decisions don’t care about your subjective assessments of how “nice the neighbors are” (lol), as if there’s no other neighborhoods in the DMV with “nice” neighbors. I know of a trailer park within good commuting distance from DC in a 7/10 school district. I’m sure they also think their neighbors are nice. I’ll go tell them they can sell their trailers for $850k now.

The DMV region has some of the most overpriced homes in the country as well. Even before inventory was low, Bethesda was considered the most over-priced city in the country. Houses there are being priced at nearly a quarter of a million dollars above their actual value, and I imagine it’s only gotten worse now. Not everyone is real estate market sheep/slaves, and they’re not willing to pay for houses that are so overpriced to the point that the amount in dollars the house is overpriced exceeds the average value of a home in the country. There will be a San Francisco effect happening in this region very shortly (and I’d argue that it has already started it’s premature phases).

If McLean High is really all that nice, then why is a school that is full of students of such a high income-bracket only a 7/10? That’s really embarrassing and that must mean that the school is actually garbage considering the demographics of that school. I imagine that the minority of disadvantaged kids going there probably do even worse, which is also worrisome. It tells me that that school is so low-quality that even the very privileged kids there aren’t performing at the same level kids of their demographics in other schools do. I wouldn’t send my kids to that garbage school even if I could get the house I have now over there for the same price. If I cared about public schools, I’d be living in Howard County, MD, where I could get a house that’s expensive and actually looks like it, while also being within reasonable commuting distance from work. I could also be in a school cluster that puts McLean to shame. A 30 minute drive to DC from Clarksville or Highland is fine if it means I wouldn’t live in a shitshack. A 50 minute commute to work is becoming increasingly tolerable to many people if it means that they won’t live in a shitshack.

This thread is full of arrogant, gentrification/suburban imperialism implants who are seriously trying to justify exorbitant prices for houses that were intended for a significantly lower income-bracket and are too sheltered to realize that most people would not pay that price tag for a house like that, and the number of people willing to do so is increasingly getting smaller. You all are so miserable and pathetic. You claim that there’s all these amenities and such a healthy lifestyle, yet you live in one of the most clinically depressed regions in the DMV region and country.

This poster is off base on several levels and also seems a little “edgy” as is in he seems like he’s going to crack.

PP with the rant...$1 million is not an expensive house, especially around here. You keep saying "people who can afford million dollar houses" which isn't that small of a group. I have a house that cost more than $1.6 million and I care deeply about how nice the neighbors are and I cannot afford private school, most of which would cost north of $80k per year for my two kids to attend.