quote:
Go to realtor or Zillow. Check listings in Arlington and Alexandria under 430K. Not a lot of house for your money, which I guess is fine. But the locations don't really set my heart aflutter either. All that money for a 1900sqft connected townhouse (or 700sqft condo in Arlington) with little in the way of a yard and a snowball's chance of having even a single car garage?

I pay 2700 a month for 740sqft 1/1 in Crystal City, Arlington. I don't get the hype. The town isn't that fricking nice.

You aren't paying for the property - you're paying for great neighbors.

Average household income in my area is around $140k. Average. Basically everyone has a graduate degree. Practically no crime, the worst that happens here is having a bike stolen. The biggest political controversies here involve how much money to spend on a fricking streetcar line.

quote:
The town isn't that fricking nice.

Yeah, actually it is, although Crystal City is IMHO overpriced even by local standards. I'm in Courthouse, which is more accessible to everywhere else and a 740 s.f. goes for about $400 less. I suggest moving.

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Posted by Navytiger74

Member since Oct 2009

50458 posts

Posted on 1/27/15 at 11:05 am to foshizzle

quote:
You aren't paying for the property - you're paying for great neighbors.

I get that. And I love having well-to-do, educated neighbors. I leave my door unlocked more times than not. I guess I'm just used to it (lived in NW Washington, Germnay, and Bahrain before this. The cost per square foot just doesn't seem worth it. And I'm accustomed to high housing costs.

quote:
Average household income in my area is around $140k. Average.

Therein lies the problem. I bet the area is super great if you're on the upper end of that, but I'm single and just crack 100K. That's enough to get comfortably into a 1BR spending well over a third of my take-home on housing.

I'm 32 and just feel like I'm out of that 700sqft phase. That's smaller than my first apartment was.