Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone who lives in an exburb has zero interest in the area (city) where they work. They go there only for work and nothing else. Their personal life and interests are wholly separate and its a very definite decision.

Someone who lives in a suburb wants access to the city where they work for more than just work but either cant afford the same size/condition house and lifestyle (may include private school v public) in the city or is afraid to live in the city or closer to the city center (afraid the public schools are bad and cant afford private, afraid of higher crime or lesser services).

OP here. Helpful answer - thanks.

Anonymous wrote:Someone who lives in an exburb has zero interest in the area (city) where they work. They go there only for work and nothing else. Their personal life and interests are wholly separate and its a very definite decision.

Someone who lives in a suburb wants access to the city where they work for more than just work but either cant afford the same size/condition house and lifestyle (may include private school v public) in the city or is afraid to live in the city or closer to the city center (afraid the public schools are bad and cant afford private, afraid of higher crime or lesser services).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the DC area, it is a class/culture divide. Exurbs are for folks who want an old fashioned upper-middle class lifestyle - big house and yard, SAHM, etc. - without an upper-middle class income. If you're wealthy enough, you get a big house in an established neighborhood. If you can't, you look further out. If you can afford expensive private schools, you don't have to worry about public schools quality. If you met your spouse in law/grad school, you're both going to want careers and value commute time over lots of other things. People want to get as much as they can afford for the lifestyle they aspire to

Ah yes - one of my favorites. Everybody who COULD live in a big house close to town WOULD. There can be no other answer. Anybody who cannot pull this off is poor.

As we all know, everybody wants to live as close to the treasures of DC as possible, and if they can't, they sacrifice by moving West, or North - these people are 'low class'. ' d

As ridiculous as this post is, I actually agree with the last sentence, but that doesn't have to include being close to the city. We personally don't need to be and when I have to go downtown for a meeting, it sucks the life out of me. Zero desire to live there.

Before you throw darts, we live about 10 minutes from the beltway and can be downtown in 30 minutes with no traffic if needed. Somebody could definitely commute from our house to DC every day.


Exurb is a term that is thrown around here so that people can feel good about living in their crappy house close to town.

Anonymous wrote:In the DC area, it is a class/culture divide. Exurbs are for folks who want an old fashioned upper-middle class lifestyle - big house and yard, SAHM, etc. - without an upper-middle class income. If you're wealthy enough, you get a big house in an established neighborhood. If you can't, you look further out. If you can afford expensive private schools, you don't have to worry about public schools quality. If you met your spouse in law/grad school, you're both going to want careers and value commute time over lots of other things. People want to get as much as they can afford for the lifestyle they aspire to

If you live in Harpers Ferry and have a 20 min commute, then you do not live in an exurb. If you live there and commute by marc for longer than an hour, then you live in an exurb

Anonymous wrote:Is that a contraction of EXecrable subURB?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's not forget we don't all commute to DC.

This comment is neither here nor there

Who has these jobs that they know will stay close to their exurb or allow teleworking for the 20 yrs you are hoping to get your kids thru high school?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the DC area, it is a class/culture divide. Exurbs are for folks who want an old fashioned upper-middle class lifestyle - big house and yard, SAHM, etc. - without an upper-middle class income. If you're wealthy enough, you get a big house in an established neighborhood. If you can't, you look further out. If you can afford expensive private schools, you don't have to worry about public schools quality. If you met your spouse in law/grad school, you're both going to want careers and value commute time over lots of other things. People want to get as much as they can afford for the lifestyle they aspire to

OP here. Thank you - this is helpful. If your take is accurate it would seem to be that the exurbs will suffer desirability at the expense of the suburbs if we continue to see a greater division of income. I would have thought that with more folks working from home through the use of technology this would not be the case. It seems like since the recession this is indeed the case though, that is more folks wanting to suburban vs exurban life style.

I'm the pp from the other thread that owns the house in Manassas. We bought because it was affordable. We had a 1 bedroom+den apartment that was 1300 and IIRC going up to about 1400. A two bedroom in that building was 1800. Our house is big (at least to us) and only 1500/month. We had other debts. The place was affordable - that's why we bought out here. It wasn't any of this "lifestyle" Mumbojumbo - it was purely a financial decision. TBH, it was odd coming out here. The culture isn't that different but it is a slight shift. The biggest shock was seeing how badly people needed work out here in 2010. Self employed laborers, painters, landscapers, tree companies, etc would leave unsolicited business cards on or door nearly every day. Unfortunately we couldn't afford to hire them back then. Now we could probably hire someone to help with some work but they aren't leaving the business cards any longer. I went with DH to the hardware store to pick out a couple of things a couple weeks after we moved and there were 3 people that approached us in the actual hardware store asking if we needed help with the work. It made me sad.