The Right Fit Is Worth It

The Neighborhood You Choose Says a Lot About What 'Home' Means to You

By Mary Ellen Slayter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2007; R01

When Laura Updyke and her husband, Craig, began looking for a new home five years ago, one thing they knew was that they were committed to staying in the District.
The Brookland house they eventually settled on was "kind of a disaster," but the neighborhood "embodied everything we wanted," she said.

The "everything" that trumped the stress of fixing up an old house, even with their first baby on the way, was the neighborhood's close-knit feel and its social and racial diversity. "The whole concept of community is very important to us," said Updyke, now the mother of three young children. "It was very important to us that we not just move into a house."
The Updykes have put down roots in Brookland, joining a church three blocks from their house. Their oldest child attends a nearby charter school.

As they discovered, houses aren't just about debt ratios, square footage and commuting times. If they were, all those Marylanders and Virginians wouldn't be inching past each other on the American Legion Bridge every weekday morning and evening. Houses are also about home, that feeling that you belong somewhere and that a place belongs to you. Our values influence our choices as much as our pocketbooks do.

After all, someone who buys a U Street condo is looking for a lifestyle very different from someone who yearns for 10 acres of southern Prince George's woodlands.
For many people, children push these discussions about values to the forefront.

"My biggest priority in life is my family. Everything I do really revolves around them now," said Trent Hamm, who runs the Simple Dollar, a personal-finance blog. "I chose to live in a small town in the upper Midwest mostly for their benefit -- rural environment, lots of freedom to explore and learn who they are, and strong education."

But politics also plays a part. Hamm calls himself "a small-government greenie" and said that's a big reason he went small-town. "Not much government to interfere with my choices, and no one cares if I have a giant compost bin in the back yard."

There are nice places that might make him downright miserable -- South Riding in Loudoun County, for example. Friendly people, very family-oriented -- it's one of the Washington area's most popular developments among people with school-age children -- but that compost bin had better be properly maintained, given the community's strict covenants, conditions and restrictions.

Aesthetic rules were part of the appeal for Deanna McFarland, who had lived with her family in communities similar to South Riding in Arizona and Southern California. "I'm pretty picky about how the houses look, " said McFarland, now the administrative manager for South Riding Proprietary, which governs the development.

She's also picky about schools, which she said was the main draw in South Riding, along with all the sports and other activities nearby. After comparing local school districts, she said, she knew she wanted Loudoun. As her three children have gotten older and done well in those schools, with one now off to college at the University of Virginia, she says she made the right choice.
Clearly, much as Hamm loves his small town and Updyke loves her city 'hood, McFarland was drawn to South Riding for the community's values.

The homeowners association might run the place, but the kids are its top priority. You only have to look at how they spend those dues to see what they value: swimming pools, tennis courts, and plenty of festivals and parades.

Wendy Taylor, South Riding Proprietary's general manager, said that the community's priorities make it very different from her last job, at a country club development in Boca Raton, Fla., where the values could get a little "bizarre." That association spent $4 million on a new front gate. A South Riding resident would look at that number and see a lot of ice cream for the Stingrays, the local swim team.

Of course, community values aren't solely the province of people with children.
When Rebecca Henry and her partner bought a bungalow in Maryland's Riverdale Park in March, they weren't thinking about just their monthly mortgage payment. They knew they wanted an older house for the "character."

"Neither one of us feels comfortable in brand-new construction, where everything is nice and plumb and square," Henry said.

Before they bought, they had been renting in Columbia Heights, but it wasn't a good fit. "We weren't happy. The dog wasn't happy."
Henry, a lawyer, said she feels at home in her working-class neighborhood. (So does the dog, as well as the new one they've since adopted.) "It's not too ritzy. We don't feel like we have to feel competitive. People spend time taking caring of their yards and houses, but they do a lot of the work themselves."

The two never even considered living on the other side of the Potomac -- the commute would have been crazy. And there were political considerations, too. "Because we're a gay couple, well, we're feeling a little bitter about Virginia." Virginia voters last year passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

If you're house-shopping, how do find the place where you'll feel most at home?
Hamm said the first step is to figure out what matters most to you. "If you sit down and really think about your core values, features of a home become obvious." He and his wife are planning as many as five children, so they wanted a lot of bedrooms. But to balance that with their environmental concerns, they kept the other spaces and amenities in the house more modest.
You'll also want to think about what you want to be close to. Friends? Family? Church?
Your real estate agent will be able to help you with only some of these questions, as many of the most pertinent topics are off-limits because of fair housing laws. But there are ways to get the information you need about the type of community you're interested in. Don't ask where all the Jewish people live, for instance. Instead, ask for help in finding a place within a certain distance of the synagogue you want to attend. "You have to give a very specific location," said Andi Fleming, an agent with Long & Foster in the District.

Another way to glean information about is by getting online. South Riding, for example, has an incredibly detailed and informative e-mail discussion group. So does Kentlands, a planned community in Gaithersburg. Many neighborhoods in the Washington area do.

But online discussions aren't to be taken as gospel. "They often get hijacked by people with an agenda. They're useful, but you need to take everything with a grain of salt, especially the negative stuff," Updyke said.

In the end, finding the right place may be as much about serendipity as it is about research. Updyke, after all, said she discovered Brookland when she was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland and would visit Colonel Brooks' Tavern, the neighborhood bar. "I always got a really good vibe out of it."