First off: I know now is a terrible time to house search with interest rates, home prices and rents through the roof. No arguments there.
My wife works remotely for a nonprofit out of DC. On a recent trip to work in office, she has expressed interest in moving closer to better support her team. We’ve just started exploring options within the Washington metropolitan area, that’d be a reasonable commute, preferable by public transit.
If you have knowledge of this area with suggestions for where we should consider, and/or any dos and dont’s please let me know.
Thanks very much!
As others have said, plan on taking public transit. Much as I despise metro, it’s better than driving. It’s pricey, though; I spend almost $19/day parking at the end of a line and taking the train downtown. If you’re hell bent on driving, then be sure to live on the same side of the river as the job. Crossing the Legion bridge is a CF no matter the time of day.
This is the metro map
https://www.wmata.com/content/dam/wmata-com/maps/system-map-rail.pdf
And there’s supposed to be a light rail line at some point
Truly, I urge you to consider how you feel about 90+ temps with 90% humidity
DC was designated for the federal capitol explicitly because it is an unbearable swamp and the concept was intended to prevent Congress from staying there and becoming embedded
This was, of course, before the invention of air conditioning, but the plan was a solid one.
Most of the actual swamps (wetland variety) have been drained since, but the swamp-airs are certainly still around.
preferable by public transit
good call, driving into the city was hell when i lived there in the 90s and it’s only gotten worse.
the trains are great if one goes where you need it to. so i guess the absolute first thing to do is check the service maps for washington metro as well as vre/marc (commuter rail). if her office is near a station, that can quickly narrow down possible locations to near stations on the same line(s).
many of the suburban metro stations were designed to commute to themselves (park and rides), with lots of parking, bike racks and lockers, and kiss-and-ride (drop-off) lanes. some of the city stations have housing on the same block or literally right above them, even.
i’d shy away from alexandria for now, cuz that’s where amazon is building “hq2” (that’s along the blue/yellow metro in va).
I would recommend not doing that. Every experience ive had and have anecdotally heard about DC in the past 12 years have been extremely, overwhelmingly negative. Not to mention exceedingly expensive and more and more fascist by the day
