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Washington home prices are not for the faint of heart. While values in 97% of the markets in the nation took a dive the last few years, Washington merely flatlined (and the Bay Area continued to climb). If we wanted to buy a home we can enjoy, DC looked less and less viable, where our modest money would be chasing property alongside that of corporate lawyers, lobbyists, non-profit executives, and more corporate lawyers. In Baltimore, values have taken a real nosedive the last 10 years, in the midst of crime, corruption, and suck-ass Oriole teams. Entire blocks of downtown rowhouses are burned out. The city has been losing population for 70 years, and my competition in the marketplace would instead be rubes, drifters, small-time thieves, and carny folk. So, when I started a job here, Bal'mer become a matter of when, not if. But I had to strike reasonably soon. The DC market is so saturated that a lot of people will soon realize what a sucker's bet it is with Baltimore next door.
So that's why Baltimore. Lauraville is a product of driving around, and homesearching. Obviously, everybody's world is divided into three types of places:
1) manicured, refined communities where folks pay top dollar to keep away from certain elements and keep them away from you,
2) places where social forces conspire to keep all negative elements contained,
3) the battleground in between.
It's up to you where you see the lines. Each city has crime maps, reviews of neighborhoods online, and word of mouth about "livablitity." Many homeowners are writing/speaking, whether they admit it or not, as an investor. Do they see their home increasing in value since they moved in? But as long as you see that, that's OK. Markets represent a lot of less cynical and more organic things. I don't want to hiding from Avon Barksdale's crew, but I obviously don't want my wife walking home among them.
(People say "Is it coming back?" I always thought that sounded insulting. For the people who live there, a community isn't 'back' or 'not back yet.' It's there and they're living genuine lives there.)
So we search for the type of house we like, and we ask ourselves and others why similar homes are priced differently in different neighborhoods? We reconciled those disparities*, by driving around the neighborhoods, visiting shopping strips and coffeehouses, checking the saloons to see how sleazy, and comparing crime reports. Once Lauraville had become a focus, I mentioned it around and realized I had three co-workers who lived there and asked about it. And it comes down to the same thing as trying on a new jacket. Do you see this fitting you and do you feel authentic there?
*I found a gorgeous manor of a home priced at $250 K, that would have been worth 6-10 times that in most of DC. The community was goodish too. We figured we'd visit and it would be a disaster inside. But it was elegant. But it was the first thing we saw and we thought "Too good to be true, there must be a disaster here (besides the probably insane HVAC bills)" and didn't move when we heard there were already bids in on it. Guess I missed out on the Bruce Wayne lifestyle. Oh, well. I would have had to wear a cravat all the time, anyway.
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