PG County Real Estate

When you were young and had no car, you might have walked places out of necessity.  Now that you are established and are ready to buy your new home in Prince Georges County, you can make a lifestyle choice to walk for health and energy savings by buying in an area  convenient to places you frequent.  To make this easy to plan for, many real estate agents are including a “walkability” score in the listing to indicate the proximity of stores, restaurants, school, parks, other places of recreation, and even workplaces.

Walkability scores are determined by how accessible services are; any amenity within .25 miles is considered walkable until it is one mile away.  The composite scores are organized on a 100 point scale.  To determine the walkabilty of a particular address, you can simply go to the www.walkscore.com and enter it there.  It is possible to determine a walk score for a city, but the resulting number  may not apply to every address in the area.

Scores are figured on a 100 point scale:

99-100 The Ultimate Walker’s Paradise – you can perform most errands on foot without needing a car

70-89 Very walkable

50-69 Somewhat walkable but many destinations require a car, bus, or bike to get there.

25-49 Car reliant

0-24 Car dependent. Most walking will be to your car!

The most walkable areas have a Main Street where businesses are clustered and located near enough to the street to encourage people to walk in the front door instead of entering from the back parking lot.  Population density should be able to sustain businesses and mixed use housing.  The stores and restaurants may not reflect personal taste, but having a restaurant within a mile radius will assure you won’t starve to death, even if you prefer Burger King but live near a McDonald’s.

Sometimes cities are cut up by highways or have large amounts of land devoted to colleges, medical centers, and parks.  This is the case in much of Prince Georges County, where many cities near Washington DC rank as only “somewhat walkable.”

Capital Hts 48         Chevy Chase 71      College Park 62           Cottage City 60              Forest Hts 46     Greenbelt 55         Laurel 77                    North Brentwood 63        Upper Marlboro 72

Even when living in a less walkable community, you can find an “oasis of walkability.”  You can choose to live near a university as in College Park, live near a park as in Greenbelt, or live near Wisconsin Ave. and East-West Highway in Chevy Chase where stores are clustered.   If you work in DC, a major concern is getting to work easily; these areas offer easy access to the highways into the city or proximity to public transit.  You can still drive less and walk more.

Thinking of buying a home in Prince Georges County?  Let your fingers do the walking to check out the homes we offer at Express Realty Services.  Then check out your walkability score on one of the great properties for sale in the area.

If you work in DC, a condo in the city might not be your cup of tea. You might want a home in the suburbs, where you might be able to find something you like for less than the average-price home in the District of $497,315.  If you move into Northern Virginia or Maryland, you can find some interesting homes that go for significantly less.

DC Convenience for Less

In the Inner Ring area that includes Fairfax, Montgomery, and Prince Georges County,   you can find a great place for an average of $397,320 – up to 17% less than a year ago.  In the Outer Ring suburbs of Loudon, Prince William and Frederick Counties, an area heavily hit by foreclosures, average prices are $280,553.

Homes tend to be on the market for 93 days – 80 in the core, 97 in the Inner Ring, and 88 in the Outer Ring. The Washington, DC area has a 5.5 month stock of homes available to buyers, but in Prince Georges County, there is a 12.2 month stock of homes.

Why Prince Georges County

The availability of a large stock of homes makes Prince Georges County a great target for potential first-time home buyers.  Current area sales figures indicate that buyers can negotiate about 8% off the asking price of homes.  Coupled with the $8,000 housing credit available through November, 30, 2009 and a tight apartment market, first time buyers have even more incentive to look toward Prince Georges County.

Prince Georges County is home to 10 cities including College Park, Greenbelt, and Laurel, and 17 towns, including Upper Marlboro, University Park, and Brentwood. Some cities are only a mile away from the DC itself and are tied to the District with excellent public transportation.

Intrigued at the thought of being so near DC for $100,000 less?  If so, call Express Realty Services today. We have a great stock pre-owned home, a bank-owned home, or a recently renovated and refurbished homes ready for you to call your own.  The #4 ranked Keller Williams franchise in the world can help you buy a home!

Even in this Internet age, there’s nothing like a good realtor by your side when you are looking for your perfect home in Prince Georges County. This is true even these days when nearly 90% of home buyers and sellers rely on the Internet at some point in their transaction.  There’s a lot of helpful information online that both educates and misleads real estate shoppers.  A good agent can help set you straight.

If you want to buy a home, you may browse the Internet to see what’s out there, but there will come a day when you can’t find a home fast enough.  You see lots of homes with lots of pictures on line but when you are ready, will you complete your transaction on online?  Will you want to make call after call about different properties you see on line?  Are you seeing all the properties available in your desired area in Prince Georges County?   Are there homes you might be overlooking? When it is time to get serious, you will want a REALTOR® to answer all your questions and provide some continuity to your search.

Once you have a realtor, you will quickly learn that not all properties are listed online; many that are aren’t as they appeared when you walk through the home.  Once the Realtor® sees what you like, she may quickly come up with a few choices you didn’t even know you had.

Your agent will prove valuable in the whole area of evaluating pricing, making an offer, and negotiating your deal when you get to that point.  Many times sellers overprice their homes for the market, based on what they paid, what they put in it, and what an online assessment said.  If they have an agent, they may have refused to listen to advice about setting a reasonable price.  Your agent will show you the most recent statistics on what homes in the particular neighborhoods of Prince Georges County have sold for and will be able to tell you why similar homes might have sold for different prices.

As is true in all sales situations, you want to buy low and your seller wants the best price given the market.  You may have heard that because this is a buyer’s market, you will be able to call the shots when you make an offer.  Your agent will help arrive at a fair offer, not only based on the facts but based on what she knows about the seller’s motivation to sell.