Buying Your First Home In Washington, DC: Location, Location, Location - Part 3 Of A Series

Now you know how much you can spend for your new place, and it's time for your agent to show you where homes in your range are located.

Buying in the DC Metro area can leave you numb with the sheer number of choices. In DC, many first time buyers favor condos, especially if they want to be near downtown where a lot of the fun and action is.

Once you cross the border into Maryland or Virginia, you usually get more space for the money, but then there might be the dreaded rush hour commute.

What makes some neighborhoods more desirable than others?

• A Metro stop: even though the DC Metro system rarely goes where you want to go, it can be good for the morning commute (assuming your office is anywhere close to a Metro station)
• Schools: if they are a factor for you, greatschools.net is a site than many of my buyers swear by. It rates public and many public charter schools.
• Fun: if you can walk to restaurants, movies and other fun activities, it tends to push an area onto buyers' favorite neighborhoods list.
• Chic: some neighborhoods are fashionable. Others are not. Others still are on the brink of reinventing themselves.
  

There is a lot of demographic information that your agent can't give you without running afoul of the Fair Housing laws. She can't discuss the age, race, sex, religion or even political affiliation (at least not in DC) of your potential neighbors. Of course, you can always ask friends and colleagues who are not Realtors®, or just walk or drive through the various neighborhood and look at the neighbors - even talk to them.

A lot of condo buildings and neighborhood associations even have their own web sites, and you can learn a lot about the character of a place by checking them out - at least if they allow public access.

If you are thinking about buying your first Washington area home, contact Patricia Kennedy, a Realtor® licensed in DC, Maryland and Virginia. And she knows all of the great champagne taste, beer budget neighborhoods in the Metro area.