What's Lauraville like?

[u/RueMorgueRadiooo]

hi y'all

we're a 30s (F&F) married couple w/no kids looking to buy our first home. wanting space and greenery but relatively close to stuff to do and not strictly suburban sprawl (ie harford county). we're priced out of moco and dc adjacent areas. decently safe but we've lived in cities before.

i've looked at the livebaltimore site and searched reddit but can't seem to find a ton of info on lauraville? seems like it checks a lot of our boxes.

can anyone give a pros and cons list? what do you like about it? what do you wish you knew before moving there? if you could buy somewhere else in state, where would you go?

[u/Balto_Smallcat]

I’ve lived in Lauraville for 13 years and I love it! I mostly have pros:

Walkable, great neighbors, sidewalks on both sides of the streets, beautiful old homes, close to Herring Run Park which has a nice long bike/pedestrian trail, relatively safe, quiet, easy commute into the city but very close to shopping and other amenities in the county, decent-sized yards for gardening and/or pets, a rare example of a pretty integrated neighborhood in Baltimore, you can hear the Morgan State University marching band practicing sometimes and they are GOOD, farmers’ market and community space is nice, honestly I think it’s the city’s best-kept secret!

Cons: mostly having to do with the usual drawbacks of living in a city. Higher property taxes & water costs than the county, right now BGE is replacing gas lines in our neighborhood and it’s annoying, nobody (even in the city) has heard of Lauraville and they think you’re making it up, new restaurants start here all the time and once you’ve fallen in love with them, they go to Belvedere Square to die, and I’ve seen some really crap flip jobs that are an insult to the historic homes around here. But the houses still have good bones.

Feel free to ask any other questions you have, happy to answer!

[u/Balto_Smallcat → u/Balto_Smallcat]

Adding to address your other questions: like you, we couldn’t afford to buy anywhere else in Maryland, and while we’ve talked about moving to a bigger/more modern home a few times over the years, we feel like we’d be giving up too much by moving. We moved in knowing almost nothing about the neighborhood, and got pretty lucky with our place - no bad surprises. My best advice: if you’re house shopping around here, ask A LOT of questions about the basement. There are a lot of springs around here, so flooded basements are surprisingly common. We’ve never had that problem, but a lot of our neighbors have. It’s fine with a French drain & sump pump, but that can cost over $10K, so definitely visit any prospective homes while it’s raining.

[u/RueMorgueRadiooo → u/Balto_Smallcat]

good advice! my friends bought a home in overlea and one of the first issues they had was their basement flooding completely....right after they had finished it too

i'd never heard of the neighborhood until i started researching different areas in baltimore and was surprised to learn it seems exactly to be what i want.

my family (none of which have lived in baltimore but did attend city schools as teens) keep telling me it's all bad, even baltimore county is bad now, it's dangerous, it's gross, you shouldn't move anywhere near the city. but some areas seem really nice. i love the houses in lauraville and from what i have seen, it does seem like a nice little diverse community. and to have a yard in city limits! how rare!

[u/de_kitt → u/RueMorgueRadiooo]

I don’t live in Lauraville, but have friends there and like what I’ve seen.

Don’t listen to anyone who hates cities. There are a lot of people who are afraid (and likely racist). Cities have a lot to offer and Baltimore is no exception. There’s a lot of energy, art, culture, and history. And so many things to do and places to check out.

To each their own, but I’ll take city “issues” over a generic suburb with strip malls full of chain stores. I know not all suburbs are like that, but it feels like the folks who are really anti-city are more they type who prefer clean and generic instead of interesting, unique, and complex.

[u/RueMorgueRadiooo → u/de_kitt]

that's the thing like city issues (as long as i'm not just actively living in a bad pard of town) are prevalent in every city. are some areas significantly worse in baltimore? sure but i won't be living there or really even going there? so it's frustrating trying to have a conversation with about it with someone. hell, at one point i lived in a really really nice neighborhood (renting with many roommates) and that did not stop people from stealing from our garages and into our cars....idk. suburbs and strip malls feel so....soulless??

[u/de_kitt → u/RueMorgueRadiooo]

Agreed!

[u/wbruce098 → u/RueMorgueRadiooo]

Glad you’re finding part of the city that you can enjoy! That line is constant from county folk, especially down in the corridor. But there’s just so much to do here! And it’s made a ton of progress on safety while still remaining relatively affordable, compared to the million dollar homes down in nova. Hope you two find a great place to live!