Washington, D.C

5 Northern Virginia Suburbs of Washington DC You Should Consider Moving

Published

1 year ago

December 9, 2024

5 Northern Virginia Suburbs of Washington DC You Should Consider Moving

It’s so hard to move to this area with such a variety of choices and cost of real estate. You have probably checked sites like Niche.com and wondered if their rankings were accurate. Newsflash, they are not. I have a video on Niche’s top Arlington neighborhoods and some of the neighborhoods weren’t even real. Beware of AI Garbage people. Don’t trust AI Garbage when making major life decisions.

This is my list, my, “If I were house hunting again, here are the places I would consider in Northern Virginia for my family” list. At the end, I’ll tell you where I would never want to live.

The 5 Northern Virginia Suburbs You Should Consider

Vienna

I admit it, I’m a Vienna booster. Vienna wins “Best All Around” in the Yearbook Superlatives for me. It’s filled with family-friendly neighborhoods, crawling with great schools and has a strong community feel. It’s easy to meet people and it is close to employment centers. Vienna, Virginia is about 15 miles west of downtown Washington DC.

There is a variety of real estate in Vienna, but it is on the pricier side of real estate for the area. The $800,000’s will get you a rambler or split-level home. Most of the buyers looking at Vienna would consider that a “teardown.” They will buy the home for the precious land on which it sits, and the location and amenities Vienna has to offer. They will tear it down and build a bigger house in its place. Maple Avenue, which runs right through Vienna, is filled with restaurants that have stood the test of time, and offer a diverse array of food types.

The town of Vienna has 12 Parks and the Vienna Recreation Center offers recreational and educational programs as well as festivals & concerts year-round. Chillin on Church is a monthly block party that runs from June to September. There are Fourth of July fireworks at Yeonas Park, Oktoberfest, a Halloween Parade, Holiday Stroll, a Kids on the Green summer series of events, Memorial Day Celebration and a Farmer’s Market. ViVa Vienna is a music and craft festival. The W&OD Trail also runs right through Vienna and many walkers, runners and bikers use this trail daily.

Lyon Park – Arlington

Lyon Park is about as good as it gets for people who love the urban vibe but still like green space. This neighborhood has always attracted families for its proximity to DC for short commute times and amenities. Lyon Park has a friendly feeling with many people walking dogs, biking and hanging out at the park. The streets are narrow, discouraging speedy drivers and easy for kids to get to friend’s houses. The park & playground in the middle of the neighborhood serve as an anchor for everyone to head outside.

Clarendon metro is just a couple blocks away, as well as the shops and restaurants along Wilson and Clarendon Boulevards. Arlington schools are well rated, and you will see a lot of people who live here before kids, then stay in the neighborhood once the kids arrive on the scene. Homes are expensive though, they start in the $800,000’s if you’re lucky to find something at that price and go well into the $2M’s.

Del Ray – Alexandria

If living in a neighborhood with only local shops and delicious mom and pop restaurants, tons of walkability and a great sense of community sound like a dream, Del Ray is your spot. This neighborhood is super popular among both families and those without kids. Del Ray is very walkable, and it is stroller and kid-friendly.

You can find row homes, townhomes, and duplexes sprinkled throughout the neighborhood in the $500,000 – $1.5M range. If you want a single-family home, prices range from the $600,000s up to $2.5M. The popularity of Del Ray has driven the home prices quite high.

These prices vary so greatly because of age, condition, square footage, and location. Most homes in the lower ranges require a lot of renovation. Del Ray also can often have wet basements, so inspect your home thoroughly and be sure to bring in any additional inspectors that may not be typical in other neighborhoods, such as mold.

Falls Church City

The City of Falls Church stands on its own. Cities in Virginia are not within counties, and the city portion of Falls Church not only has its own government, but its own school system as well. Contained within 2.2 square miles, the population of Falls Church City is 14,000. It is the second smallest city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Falls Church City is 6 miles east of Washington DC.

It’s not easy to buy a house in Falls Church City. There are many bidding wars here. Why do people endure this trauma? Schools are unbeatable.

A single-family home here will be in the $1M – $2M range.

About 30% of Falls Church City is comprised of one person households, so it isn’t all families here. The demographics the city provides each year outline the breakdown and 41% of households have 3 or more people.

The City of Falls Church has a little downtown area with a lot of cool mom & pop places. Route 7, which is called West Broad Street, runs right through the city and has a variety of ethnic restaurants – Greek, Italian, Irish, Bolivian, Thai, Salvadorean, Jamaican and Seafood. There’s a lot to choose from and it’s all rated pretty close to 5 stars. For coffee and pastries, Northside Social is very popular as well as Rare Bird and Bakeshop.

West Springfield

If you have kids and need great schools and amenities but you also want to live somewhere without the mansions and high prices like most of Northern Virginia, without a doubt you want West Springfield. The affordability of West Springfield cannot be overstated. You can easily get a home here in the $600,000 to $700,000’s. If you want to spend more you can, there are neighborhoods that are $1M+.

This is as great of a low-key family community as you can find here. The Fairfax County Schools that serve West Springfield are some of the best in the area. While more residential feeling than other areas on this list, you have a ton of amenities nearby that are so close that you won’t feel isolated. Parks, trails, playgrounds and pools, Hidden Pond Nature Center.

Northern Virginia Suburbs You Shouldn’t Consider

So where are those places where you shouldn’t live? We can’t steer people into or away from areas, but, these are places where I feel the cons outweigh the pros, or the cons are just too strong to consider the pros that exist.

Sterling

Before I get nailed here, I will say there are some awesome parts of Sterling. There are! The northern parts, closer to Potomac Falls are everything the burbs should be. Lots of big box stores make it super convenient, and a lot of pretty awesome restaurants. It feels clean and new and of course my own personal barometer of if I could live there – there’s a Sweetwater Tavern, northeast of Dulles Town Center. There’s a Wegmans and Costco. But note that I’m not a chain-restaurant or big-box snob, I love all that because I didn’t grow up with it around me. If you hate all that, then even the northern parts of Sterling probably aren’t for you.

So why is it on my list of places you shouldn’t move to? This is Ground Zero of where 1/3 of all Internet Data is housed, in many many data centers. You may not comprehend what this really means so let’s break it down.

Did you know that 1/3 of all internet data in the world is housed in Northern Virginia? These data centers use up a ton of power as I’m sure you can imagine. And that could seriously put the power grid in jeopardy. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality suggested that the data centers use their generators more. But, the generators are diesel fueled, and this isn’t so great for air quality. If you live in an area where the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality suggests waiving air quality rules to appease the data centers, how do you think you stand as a citizen? Did I mention that whole humming thing too? You’ll never get a moment of peace and quiet, that humming will become the background noise of your life. I have tried to capture this on video, but it’s nearly impossible to hear it.

If that wasn’t enough for you, you’re also in the shadow of Dulles International Airport. If you don’t hear the data centers humming, you’ll hear the airplanes. Also, the one chain restaurant I have cut ties with happened for me in Sterling. The world’s most expensive Benihana BS Chain Restaurant in the world, so don’t go there. Seriously. They wanted like $40 for Hibachi Shrimp. That wasn’t even that good. Insanity!

Crystal City

The 1980’s called, and they want their obsolete office buildings and condos back.

Crystal City has been trying to rebrand into National Landing for six years now. A little company you have probably heard of decided to put their second headquarters here. Amazon. And BB – Before Bezos, Crystal City was a neighborhood everyone sped through on their way to somewhere else, like Old Town Alexandria. It was filled with offices and condos with high monthly fees – relics of everything half-assed about 1980’s construction.

Before Bezos, these were condos that sat on the market. After Bezos, people from all over the country started snatching them up, sight-unseen, banking on the Amazon effect. How did that work out for them? The Amazon machine hasn’t panned out the way it was advertised. Last year there was some job loss, and while Amazon has recently stated it wants all employees back in the office 5 days a week, their hiring targets aren’t where they were promised they would be. And they get a subsidy from the Commonwealth of Virginia for each new hire, so you know they must be hurting.

Development is crazy in Crystal City but there’s still much ugly. The Costco here wins the prize for being the world’s worst Costco, but it doesn’t stop me from going there and smashing my car through the parking lot. Speaking of the parking lot, someone was just carjacked in the garage there. They have a six-story garage and surface parking, I’m not sure who parks in the garage. I’m also not sure who would want to carjack someone in the garage because the line to get out of there is like the lines trying to leave a concert. You can’t really make a quick getaway.

Also did I mention you’re right next to the airport? Like, right next to it.

Manassas

People move to Manassas because it’s less expensive, but, I’m going to let the map do the talking. Do you see what I see? It’s nowhere near a highway that goes anywhere helpful. Sure you can take the Prince William County Parkway but that’s going to take you from one bedroom community to another. If you need to get to work, you’re likely going to head north to 66, and that could take forever. People commuting to Centreville report that it can take anywhere from 30 – 75 minutes.

People leave Manassas because of the commute. The commute from Manassas to pretty much anywhere else is awful. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Michael. He left the city to buy a house in Manassas and I made fun of him for a year. First he claimed it wasn’t that far and he could get there in the same time it took him to get across the city. Joke’s on him – He moved out and you will too.

Alexandria – Specifically, Huntington

When you leave the charm and loving embrace you feel in Old Town Alexandria and head south, you will wonder if you somehow went from Boston to Gary Indiana in a split second. After you pass some ugly high rise apartments, here come the sketchy motels. I’m going to let the video do the talking here.

There you have it, the unfiltered, non-sponsored list of what I believe to be the best and worst of Northern Virginia!

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Washington, D.C

The director of the Congressional Budget Office—known for its gloomy national debt data—is very optimistic that a crisis will be avoided entirely | Fortune

Published

4 hours ago

April 20, 2026

Press Room

The director of the Congressional Budget Office—known for its gloomy national debt data—is very optimistic that a crisis will be avoided entirely | Fortune

Dr Phillip Swagel is an optimist, both by nature and when he looks at the U.S. economy.

This fact is perhaps at odds with what one might assume: Swagel is the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the nonpartisan agency that offers independent budgetary and economic analysis to Congress.

Very often—an inevitable occupational hazard—the subject of national debt and the interest the U.S. Treasury pays to maintain is its central focus. The numbers are eye-watering: Public debt stands at more than $39 trillion. The interest expense on that borrowing now exceeds $1 trillion a year. Indeed, the latest budget update from the CBO highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out nearly $530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a week.

The CBO’s figures are routinely cited by policymakers, think tanks, and lobbyists as alarming evidence that the U.S. needs to find a more sustainable fiscal path or risk dire straits.

Swagel doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the U.S. will face a crisis of its own making. His justification is simple: He was at the Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis, and joined the CBO months before the COVID pandemic began. He has watched as the U.S. economy, seemingly against all odds, has clawed its way out of economic crises before.

That’s not to say Swagel isn’t a staunch advocate of setting the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path—rather, he trusts the people in power to do so when the time comes.

Why the optimism?

Among those concerned about national debt are notable names: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also worried about federal spending and has endorsed a plan floated by Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett that would render members of Congress ineligible for reelection if they allow deficits to exceed 3% of GDP.

On the other hand, optimistic economists suggest that, despite the value of the debt, it’s not actually an issue: the bond market is holding steady, indicating a reliable market of buyers. Likewise, the U.S.’s own central bank buys huge swaths of the debt, meaning, in the simplest of layman’s terms, the economy can essentially print its own money. There are holes in this argument, not least the fact that Fed chairman nominee Kevin Warsh has suggested he would like to reduce the Fed’s balance sheet and may therefore be less inclined to finance borrowing.

Swagel’s positive outlook doesn’t rely on the argument that a crisis hasn’t happened yet, so therefore it never will: “[My optimism] is rooted in my experience,” Swagel tells Fortune in an exclusive interview in Washington D.C. “First being at Treasury during the financial crisis and seeing very difficult times and the country coming together with an effective response—not saying it’s perfect, lots of controversy—but it was effective.”

“The second thing is policymakers are smart, they’re thoughtful. Interacting with members of Congress makes me optimistic. I know you read about all the squabbles … I’m completely aware of this, but the policymakers that are thinking about these things are thoughtful and effective. Not necessarily always effective at passing legislation, but that’s part of our political system, it was set up to make it difficult ot pass legislation.”

Decisions on the horizon

Swagel’s optimism that Congress will be pushed into action will be tested sooner rather than later, likely at some point in the next six years, he told Fortune. This is partly due to the fact that, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) both Social Security and Medicare will become insolvent within that time period.

“Making progress to address the fiscal trajectory would be a positive for the U.S. economy,” Swagel said. “Credible steps would lead to lower interest rates that would make the subsequent adjustment easier, there is a reward to virtue. It’s a positive thing, we can’t go on [with] the scolding narrative. My sense is that members of Congress understand the fiscal situation, it’s not that everyone single one has looked at our one-pager of numbers and understands the debt to the third decimal point, but they understand something needs to be done.”

“It doesn’t have to be done immediately, but at some point reasonably soon.”

Swagel is of the opinion that bond investors haven’t increased risk premiums not because they’re not worried about a fiscal crisis, but because they have priced in preventative action from Congress—in his mind “a vote of confidence that my optimism is not misplaced.”

“As a country, we face up to these problems. It’s not happening now, I’m not sure it’s going to happen in the rest of this year or even the next year, or the next two years. But we will face up to it, and the market in some sense expects us to, because otherwise interest rates would be higher,” he explained.

The Cheesecake Factory

The role of the CBO, to some extent, is to provide policymakers with their options if and when they do choose to take action on federal deficits. It’s a menu not unlike the Cheesecake Factory, Swagel says: Large, inclusive of a range of modifications and options, and delivered without judgement.

“Right now it’s maybe a pick three, and you’re looking at a six or seven course menu,” joked Caleb Quakenbush, director of fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, in an interview with Fortune. “The longer you delay, the more you’re gonna have to add to your tab, and those options become more expensive.”

Indeed, economists and analysts aren’t necessarily worried about the absolute level of government debt, rather the debt-to-GDP ratio. Depending on whom you ask, the debt-to-GDP ratio stands at around 122% of GDP at present. This measure demonstrates an economy’s spending versus its growth, and the risk associated with lending to a nation that isn’t growing fast enough to handle its spending. To rebalance that ratio, an economy could either cut spending or increase growth—the latter being by far the less painful option.

The growth option is becoming less feasible, Michael Peterson, CEO of fiscal think tank the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “I think it requires government action because we’ve waited so long. We’ve added so many trillions, and the current deficit is so big at 6% that the level of growth you would need really exceeds what is feasible.

“Growth needs to be a part of it, but it’s sort of a vicious cycle. The longer we delay, the more debt we have, the slower growth is going to be. The more we get this under control, I think the greater optimism there is, interest rates go down, more growth comes from that. It’s sort of a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on your policy response.”

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Washington, D.C

12th Honor Flight Tallahassee returns home from successful trip to Washington D.C.

Published

16 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

12th Honor Flight Tallahassee returns home from successful trip to Washington D.C.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Seventy-two veterans took a trip Saturday to our nation’s capital to visit memorials honoring their service in the armed forces.

This year marks the 12th trip to Washington, D.C. for Honor Flight Tallahassee.

Early Saturday morning, veterans and their guardians met to take a charter flight up to D.C.

Throughout the day, veterans were taken to the World War II memorial, as well as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. The veterans also visited Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

More Tallahassee news:

The day ended with a wonderful welcome home celebration.

Our Jacob Murphey, Julia Miller, Taylor Viles, and Grace Temple accompanied the veterans, capturing moments from throughout the day.

The team will have live coverage from Washington, D.C. on Monday to share more from the day’s events.

We will continue to have coverage throughout the month of May, leading up to our Honor Flight special on Memorial Day.

To keep up with the latest news as it develops, follow WCTV on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor and X (Twitter).

Have a news tip or see an error? Write to us here. Please include the article’s headline in your message.

Be the first to see all the biggest headlines by downloading the WCTV News app. Click here to get started.

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

1 day ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.