Anonymous wrote:We live on a 2-lane busy street (it's on a bus route) in Arlington. There are pros/cons:

Pros:
We're plowed immediately after every snowstorm and rarely lose power
I'm less nervous about crime -- why break into our house when you can go to a quiet street one block over?
With good windows you can't really tell it's busy

Cons:
It can take a minute to back out of the driveway waiting for other care/pedestrians
I won't let kids cross the at the intersection because cars often don't stop at the crosswalk
There are lots of people walking by, which made me nervous about letting kids play on the sidewalk by themselves
I think it lowers the value of the house (vs being on a cul de sac)

Can you tell me what your windows are? I live on a street that isn't particularly busy, but is used as a cut through. This isn't an issue typically, but there are occasional issues with the loud modified cars, and also occasional loud drunk people walking down the street in the wee hours of the weekend morning. I can hear normal conversations through our windows, and I really don't think I should, so I'm looking into replacing at least the bedroom windows but not sure what to look for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in CCDC, and the streets I would definitely avoid for SFHs (not for condos) are: Connecticut, Military, and Nebraska (especially south of Military). Busy streets, but not necessarily deal-breakers, would be the cut-through streets like McKinley and Rittenhouse.
The reason you want to avoid those streets are 1) noise; 2) exhaust pollution; 3) dust; 4) inconvenience, especially if you have to back out of a driveway onto a busy street; 5) harder to sell.
I understand why people buy these houses, though. They are generally less expensive and get you into the neighborhood schools (Lafayette, Much, Deal, Wilson).

I live right near there, and a sizable number of houses on Nebraska south of Military have gone on the market during the pandemic. I would say that 90 percent went for above asking, and 95 percent were off the market in less than a week. So yes, there are plenty of people who do not consider a busy road a dealbreaker, despite what the Double-Yellow Brigade on this board thinks.

Of course. People obviously buy homes on busy streets like Nebraska. But turnover on busy streets is also higher than on streets that are quieter. People will buy at that busy intersection because they want to get into the neighborhood, so they compromise. Given how tight the market has been, I'm not surprised. Even that house on Military right at that super busy intersection eventually sold.

Anything other than the end of a cul-de-sac backing to a park is a busy street.

We live on a 2-lane busy street (it's on a bus route) in Arlington. There are pros/cons:

Pros:
We're plowed immediately after every snowstorm and rarely lose power
I'm less nervous about crime -- why break into our house when you can go to a quiet street one block over?
With good windows you can't really tell it's busy

Cons:
It can take a minute to back out of the driveway waiting for other care/pedestrians
I won't let kids cross the at the intersection because cars often don't stop at the crosswalk
There are lots of people walking by, which made me nervous about letting kids play on the sidewalk by themselves
I think it lowers the value of the house (vs being on a cul de sac)

My husband would say any street on a bus route.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:as pp said, "double yellow lines." that's my definition.

I live on a double yellow line street in Bethesda that isn't busy at all. Don't rule out a house solely because of a double yellow line on the street in front of it.

Also, some busy streets don't have double lines because the residents fight it, so you can't always tell.

I would pass on any streets that have stop signs. Again, residents fight more serious measures - they don't want their street to "seem" busy.

Anonymous wrote:I live in CCDC, and the streets I would definitely avoid for SFHs (not for condos) are: Connecticut, Military, and Nebraska (especially south of Military). Busy streets, but not necessarily deal-breakers, would be the cut-through streets like McKinley and Rittenhouse.
The reason you want to avoid those streets are 1) noise; 2) exhaust pollution; 3) dust; 4) inconvenience, especially if you have to back out of a driveway onto a busy street; 5) harder to sell.
I understand why people buy these houses, though. They are generally less expensive and get you into the neighborhood schools (Lafayette, Much, Deal, Wilson).

I live right near there, and a sizable number of houses on Nebraska south of Military have gone on the market during the pandemic. I would say that 90 percent went for above asking, and 95 percent were off the market in less than a week. So yes, there are plenty of people who do not consider a busy road a dealbreaker, despite what the Double-Yellow Brigade on this board thinks.

I wouldn’t want to be on a main thoroughfare that’s busy all day long. Our street has become a cut-through street during rush hour and that hasn’t been too bad since it’s for a limits amount of time and we have sidewalks. It’s also a plus to have a lot of walkability so we understand we will be sharing “our” street with other people. What has made the situation really hard for us is Patrick Hope‘s bill that doesn’t allow the police to pull over loud cars anymore. There’s a lot of modified cars passing through and they are really loud. They scare my kids and have woken us up on weeknights when we have to sleep for work. It sounds like Delegate Hope realizes this was a bad idea and now folks are trying to fix it, but I worry it will be hard to address. So to me, the concern isn’t normal urban street noise, it’s the cars that are modified for racing or because the owners think it’s “cool.” It’s been really disruptive and not something I think you should have to live with just because you’re in an urban environment.

Anonymous wrote:as pp said, "double yellow lines." that's my definition.

I live on a double yellow line street in Bethesda that isn't busy at all. Don't rule out a house solely because of a double yellow line on the street in front of it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That’s less than 2 cars per minute at rush hour, so I wouldn’t consider that particularly busy. I think the speed bumps probably help too.

+1
We have streets like this in our neighborhood and DCs walk on them all the time to get to school and they don't feel busy. On weekends when they see their friends there are like no cars.

It helps if there are sidewalks!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To most posters here, it's anything busier than a cul-de-sac.

cul-de-sacs are apparently the worst

LOL. Thanks for playing along to this madness.

Agree with the double yellow lines. We live on a street that is busy for about 15 minutes during shcool drop off and pick up as it is a cut through route to the schools. But we rarely notice it because we are elsewhere during those times.

Anonymous wrote:We found a house that checks a lot of the boxes except it sits on a street that some may consider busy, which got me thinking, what would you consider a "busy street" when looking at a house? Cut through traffic? Double yellow line? Speed bumps?

This street in particular doesn't have any lines, but does have speed bumps and seems to get a fair amount of traffic. Sitting outside for a half hour at rush hour there were 50 cars. I would consider that to be busy but DH doesn't have a problem with it which made me curious what others think. Has anyone bought on a similar street and have regrets, advice, etc.? It does have a large, quiet backyard with a privacy fence.

Some of the worst neighborhoods traffic wise refuse to install safety measures, such as double lines or speed bumps. People who live there know how bad the traffic is, but do not want to call attention to it, or bring their house values down by having such safety measures in place. To me, cut through traffic is an automatic NO.

I live in CCDC, and the streets I would definitely avoid for SFHs (not for condos) are: Connecticut, Military, and Nebraska (especially south of Military). Busy streets, but not necessarily deal-breakers, would be the cut-through streets like McKinley and Rittenhouse.
The reason you want to avoid those streets are 1) noise; 2) exhaust pollution; 3) dust; 4) inconvenience, especially if you have to back out of a driveway onto a busy street; 5) harder to sell.
I understand why people buy these houses, though. They are generally less expensive and get you into the neighborhood schools (Lafayette, Much, Deal, Wilson).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We found a house that checks a lot of the boxes except it sits on a street that some may consider busy, which got me thinking, what would you consider a "busy street" when looking at a house? Cut through traffic? Double yellow line? Speed bumps?

This street in particular doesn't have any lines, but does have speed bumps and seems to get a fair amount of traffic. Sitting outside for a half hour at rush hour there were 50 cars. I would consider that to be busy but DH doesn't have a problem with it which made me curious what others think. Has anyone bought on a similar street and have regrets, advice, etc.? It does have a large, quiet backyard with a privacy fence.

Why would you care what other people think is a busy street? Do you like the house or not? Why on EARTH would you let what people think about the street in front of your house influence your decision to try to buy it?

So weird.

Because if OP buys something on a moderately busy street, eventually she will have to sell that house and wants to hear what people consider to be a busy street. Relax.

Stupid people here. First of all, a busy street a feature for as many as it is a drawback, like anything else. In many towns, the grandest houses are on the busiest streets because they were once the primary thoroughfares. But more importantly, worrying about future sale is an idiotic way to go house shopping.

You have anger issues. Have you considered that the grandest houses were also built before the surrounding land was subdivided? And it's not completely u reasonable to consider future resell value. Given that it's unlikely someone will live in their house until they die, they should give some thought to resale value. It doesn't mean that it has to be the primary factor in their decision making, but it should be considered. Only an idiot, to use your words, wouldn't at least consider that.