Anonymous wrote:

Kakamy wrote:I'm worried about the culture of WJ from what I've read online regarding the wealth of the school population (as we can't match it) and the pressure cooker atmosphere.

We live in 20814 zoned for WJ. Median home price for recent sales is $680K, much less than your upper limit of $800K. So for this particular part of the WJ zone, at least, I don't think you would need to stress about relative wealth.

I totally agree. Plus, most of that area is super close to NIH.

Kakamy wrote:I'm worried about the culture of WJ from what I've read online regarding the wealth of the school population (as we can't match it) and the pressure cooker atmosphere.

We live in 20814 zoned for WJ. Median home price for recent sales is $680K, much less than your upper limit of $800K. So for this particular part of the WJ zone, at least, I don't think you would need to stress about relative wealth.

We absolutely love our area of RCF. Close to parks, tons of kids, wonderful neighbors. And very convenient to Bethesda or Silver Spring.

It's hard to find anything for sale because turnover is low but would also consider north of tracks within Town of Kensington. Very community oriented with St. Paul Park as the community green. Feeds into Walter Johnson but double check your particular address to make sure. No houses Right now on market tho for what you're looking for. Heading south there is a really nice house for sale on Colchester in Kensington.

Isn't Cedar Lane super busy?

If your husband is commuting to NIH, I would stick with the areas you're looking at - Takoma Park will rarely be 30 minutes coming home and why have that hassle if you don't need to? There are good closer options.

14:03 again. Here is another listing to see:

http://www.redfin.com/MD/Bethesda/9701-Cedar-Ln-20814/home/11062073

You might also find some of the threads about Silver Spring both here and the "MD Public Schools" forum to be helpful. There are some recent, useful threads on Woodlin and the neighborhoods that feed into it. Your money definitely goes further a bit east and you can get walkability into downtown SS. If your husband bikes, it's a great bike commute to boot!

I'm a very happy resident of CCV. The area around Holy Redeemer (west of Connecticut) will tend to run more conservative with many kids in the local parish school rather than publics. I'm in the wedge of CCV to the east which seems to have more public school kids and doesn't strike me as politically anything in any direction. Being on the east side makes for an easier walk into downtown Kensington to the shops, farmers' market, etc. We like it a lot.

It's also the northernmost neighborhood that will get you into BCC schools; we start Rosemary Hills in the fall and many of our neighbors are very happy there. The "wedge" neighborhood you mention off Jones Bridge is tough with traffic, as a PP mentioned. It can be tough to get in an out of during rush hour, which is really a lot of hours in this area. With your budget, I'd be focused (as you are) on NCC, Kensington Parkwood (WJ schools, but folks seem very happy), Kensington (south of the train line, mainly for commuting convenience), East Bethesda (b/w the Columbia Country Club & Wisconsin Ave, though tougher with the budget) and Rock Creek Forest.

RCF is as liberal as it gets.

Anonymous wrote:I'm the near-NCC resident from yesterday. Those streets you describe are heavily hemmed by asphalt and traffic - it's a little patch of homes wedged between one of the worst intersections in the country. And while NCC park is great, I don't think there is any kind of community center or other amenities (there is a preschool there, Outdoor Nursery School.) I'd stick to NCC east of Conn Avenue if you can.

BTW I don't know why you've concluded that BCC is less of a pressure cooker than WJ. BCC has higher stats and much better college acceptance rates. Maybe it's chill but based on my kids' experience to date (oldest about to start middle school) I doubt that. Frankly I am skeptical that there are any HS environments for in lower MoCo that aren't pretty competitive. That's not a knock on the schools - just the environment of highly educated, competitive parents who are heavily invested in their kids' academic success. Not a bad thing inherently but doesn't lend itself to an especially relaxed school environment.

11:40 back again and this is a good assessment of that little neighborhood. We never looked there because we do not like mid-century homes, but the neighborhood is nice if small and is much better shielded from cut-through traffic than it was before. There is a neighborhood pool - CCRA - back in there as well as the Outdoor Nursery School but I think the wait list is years long. NCC park is great - so shady for little kids.

I live in Takoma Park and my husband works in Bethesda. I think the drive in the morning is not so bad and he leaves work around 5:15 in the evening and it usually takes him 30-45 minutes getting home unless there is some sort of traffic event. You could check out a driving / traffic app like Waze some morning to see how long a commute would be during rush hour if that would help and you aren't around here to see for yourself. I work downtown, so the commute is ideal for me (20 minutes in the car going down North Cap or 40 minutes if I take Metro because the walk to Metro is 10 minutes and I have to switch trains).

We picked this area because we wanted something very neighborhood-y, which to me meant a lot of interesting houses (different types - not just all ramblers or all colonials), sidewalks, and places to walk. We moved here ten years ago and there's actually much more here now with more good restaurant choices. We have gotten used to running to the coop instead of a real grocery store (though it's a quick couple of minute drive to a Safeway or Giant). It's not a panacea and I was not familiar with the very liberal reputation before buying here (not a problem for me, I was just ignorant of it), but we have contemplated moving recently and can't really seem to find somewhere else we would like to move. So we are now contemplating a decent-sized renovation to add a nice family room and office because our mortgage is quite low comparatively speaking due to buying a couple of years before the top of the market/bubble. There's very little good inventory in TP, though - nice houses are getting snapped up within days, like other areas around here (another reason we aren't moving - no confidence that we could actually find anything!).

I will say that when we looked, we focused on Rock Creek Forest, which we thought was nice though nothing like Takoma Park. Also considered close-in Silver Spring (20910) because of the proximity to the new "downtown" area and the fact that there are cute houses though the sidewalks are quite lacking.

TP resident here. DH commutes to downtown Bethesda every day, NIH is only a bit further. It is totally doable. That being said, not much on the market now but there is buzz about a couple houses in the 700k-800k range coming soon.