The RiverHouse apartments at 1111 Army Navy Drive in Pentagon City (staff photo)
Arlington is the tenth priciest market for rental housing in the United States, according to an updated set of rankings.
Rental website Zumper released its latest national rent report, which lists Arlington at No. 10 and neighboring D.C. at No. 9. New York City tops the list.
Zumber notes that Arlington rent grew at a faster pace over the past month than the national median, though its place in the rankings held steady.
“Zumper’s National Index showed one-bedrooms increasing 0.6% to $1,504, while two-bedrooms rose 0.8% to $1,856 in May. Both bedroom types are up about 6% year-over-year,” a spokesperson told ARLnow. “The price of one bedroom units in Arlington increased 1.3% to $2,300 last month, while two bedroom units grew 2.6% to $3,100.”
On a year-over-year basis, median one- and two-bedroom rents in Arlington are up 4.5% and 5.8%, respectively, this month.
Continued rent growth in Arlington contrasts with the falling rents earlier in the pandemic.
The report, meanwhile, notes that some less-expensive interior U.S. cities — like Columbus, Ohio and Colorado Springs — are seeing a surge in rental interest from those moving from more expensive coastal areas of the country.
Top 10 markets for median rental prices in May 2023 (via Zumper)
A PR rep for the Trust for Public Land said the change was less about Arlington and more about two other park systems.
“It’s mostly because Irvine and Minneapolis opened new parks that pushed them ahead — not because of problems in Arlington,” said Matthew Kagan.
D.C. repeated as No. 1 in the nation this year. St. Paul, Minnesota is No. 2.
Last year, after ranking in the top 3, the county touted that 99% of Arlington residents live within a 10-minute walk to the park.
“Our parks and recreation opportunities are a key contributor to quality of life in Arlington County,” Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol said in 2022. “From livability, bikeability, fitness, health and more, our community benefits from our parks.”
Arlington got lower marks, however, for overall and median park acreage.
2023 ParkScore rankings (courtesy Trust for Public Land)
The full press release about this year’s rankings is below.
Hundred dollar bills / money (Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash)
A family needs to make a bit over $84,000 to be considered middle class in Arlington.
That’s according to a new list compiled by the financial website SmartAsset. To be in the upper income tier, a household needs to make more than $250,000.
SmartAsset used Census data and the Pew Research definition of middle-income households to figure out the bounds of middle income in all 50 states and the 100 largest localities in the U.S.
At $251,302, Arlington has the third-highest upper bound of middle income in the country, according to the list. The median household income in Arlington, meanwhile, is just over $125,000.
Arlington is comparable to No. 2 San Jose, Calif., in Silicon Valley, which has an upper bound of $252,754. Topping the list is another Silicon Valley locality, Fremont, at $311,936. Fremont, home to a major Tesla manufacturing plant, has a lower bound is $104,499, making it the only city on the list where you can make six figures and be considered lower-income.
Middle class household income bounds, by locality (via SmartAsset)
SmartAsset said education and proximity propelled Arlington into the top 3.
Arlington, situated on the banks of the Potomac River, benefits from its proximity to Washington D.C. and a highly-educated workforce. Over 76% of residents 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, more than double the national average. The federal government is Arlington’s top employer, with the Department of Defense and a number of other agencies based there. Middle class households here earn up to $251,302 per year, while those earning less than $84,186 miss the threshold.
“A family income of $200,000 once felt like a milestone salary, but today, that qualifies as ‘middle class’ in several parts of the country,” a spokesperson for the site said.
This week the GazetteLeader reported that the average single-family home price in Arlington has reached $1.37 million.
The top 5 localities on the SmartAsset list are all tech-centric to some degree. Arlington, of course, is the home of Amazon’s HQ2 and numerous startups. No. 4 San Francisco needs no introduction and No. 5 Seattle is host to Amazon’s main headquarters.
On a statewide level, Virginia has a middle income lower bound of $54,245 and an upper bound of $161,926. That compares to $60,359 and $180,176 for D.C., $60,436 and $180,406 for Maryland, and $34,336 and $102,496 for West Virginia.
Specifically, Arlington is No. 5, behind No. 1 Somerville, Mass. and No. 3 Jersey City, N.J. (The latter being, arguably, Arlington’s New York metro area doppelgänger and long-time rival in variousrankings.)
The list was compiled by Opendoor, the online home-buying company that you might receive frequent solicitous letters from if you own a house in Arlington. The company’s methodology looked at factors like bicycle parking, bicycle rentals, bicycle shops, electric vehicle charging, recycling, transit, second hand shops and the local government’s sustainability efforts.
— Arlington Department of Environmental Services (@ArlingtonDES) April 11, 2023
“The cities and towns on our list, like Arlington, are putting a concerted effort into making eco-minded practices and solutions the norm, and specifically, Arlington is the first LEED Platinum certified community and is recognized as a leader in creating a sustainable environment,” Jennifer Patchen, a real estate broker for Opendoor, said in a statement. “Arlington has a long-proven success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and home buyers looking to plant roots in a ‘green’ community should consider Arlington.”
An Opendoor PR rep also noted: “78% of U.S. consumers say a sustainable lifestyle is important to them and that they’re prioritizing eco-conscious details and design in their home.”
The full list is below.
Somerville, MA
Emeryville, CA
Jersey City, NJ
Boulder, CO
Arlington, VA
Portland, OR
West Hempstead, NY
Carrboro, NC
Salt Lake City, UT
Santa Monica, CA
Temple Terrace, FL
Fort Collins, CO
Dearborn, MI
Phoenix, AZ
San Diego, CA
In addition to homeowners, Arlington’s eco bonafides have been a draw for employers.
Arlington’s Colonial Village neighborhood is the No. 2 “Best Place to Live in America,” according to a recent set of rankings.
Two other Arlington neighborhoods, meanwhile, ranked in the top 25.
Colonial Village is best known for its historic garden-style apartments and condos, built between 1935 and 1940. Lush, landscaped and tree-lined, the community is both verdant and urban — it’s in easy walking distance to Courthouse and the Courthouse Metro station.
From Niche, which ranked neighborhoods across the United States:
Colonial Village is a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia with a population of 2,895. Colonial Village is in Arlington County and is one of the best places to live in Virginia. In Colonial Village, most residents rent their homes. In Colonial Village there are a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. Many young professionals live in Colonial Village and residents tend to be liberal. The public schools in Colonial Village are highly rated.
The Rosslyn skyline in the spring (Staff Photo by Jay Westcott)
Arlington County is the second best “city” to live in the U.S., according to a new set of rankings.
The school-and-place ranking website Niche is out with the 2023 edition of its Best Places to Live in America, and Arlington is second only to Cambridge, Massachusetts — home of Harvard and MIT — on the cities list.
“Living in Arlington offers residents an urban feel and most residents rent their homes,” Niche writes about Arlington. “In Arlington there are a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. Many young professionals live in Arlington and residents tend to be liberal. The public schools in Arlington are highly rated.”
Arlington received “A+” grades for public schools, nightlife, health and fitness, and family friendliness, plus an A for diversity, outdoor activities and commute. It received a B for weather, C+ for housing and a C for cost of living.
Niche puts Arlington’s median home value at $755,800, compared to a national median of $244,900, while the median monthly rent is $2,094 compared to $1,163 nationally.
A press release about the rankings release is below.
March 20, 2023 – PITTSBURGH – Niche, the leading platform connecting students and families with colleges and schools, has just published the 2023 Best Places to Live in America rankings. In the ninth consecutive year that Niche has produced these rankings, 228 cities and 17,932 towns and neighborhoods were included. Millions of people each year use Niche rankings and profiles to help with key life decisions such as where to live and where to go to school.
This year, for the first time ever, Cambridge, Mass., has been named the #1 Best City to Live in America. Chesterbrook, Pa., a neighborhood in the Philadelphia area, keeps its title as the #1 Best Place to Live in America for the fourth year in a row.
Niche creates the annual Best Places to Live rankings by using data from sources such as the U.S. Census, FBI, Bureau of Labor Statistics and CDC combined with millions of resident reviews. The company considers factors such as affordability, the local housing market, neighborhood diversity, area public schools, walkability and more.
“For almost ten years now, our Best Places to Live rankings have helped people find a new neighborhood to call home based on what matters most to them, whether that’s affordable housing, easy access to amenities or excellent local schools,” said Luke Skurman, CEO and founder of Niche. “We are proud to be a trusted resource for families, homebuyers, professionals and retirees alike in their research. Families wondering about an area’s school district can also use our comprehensive school profiles and rankings to get a feel for their child’s potential school.”
In addition to the national rankings, users can view the Best Places, Suburbs or Neighborhoods to Live rankings by state, metro area or county. Specialized lists include Best for Families, Young Professionals, Homebuyers, Retirees and more.
Hundred dollar bills / money (Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash)
Arlington ranks near the top of many lists, but it’s near the bottom of a new one looking at purchasing power.
The county is No. 66 out of 76 on a list of “Where $100,000 Goes Furthest.” The bottom four cities on the list are New York, Honolulu, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., compared to the top-ranked cities of Memphis, El Paso, Oklahoma City and Corpus Christi.
The 2023 study by financial website SmartAsset “looked at what a $100,000 income is worth after taxes and a cost-of-living adjustment.”
“A six-figure salary is an important milestone for many people, but after taxes and amid rampant inflation, it’s not what it used to be,” a PR rep for the site said in an email. “With this in mind, SmartAsset set out to uncover what $100,000 truly feels like in America’s largest cities. To calculate this, our data team analyzed after-tax income in 76 of the largest U.S. cities and adjusted those figures for the cost of living in each place.”
“Our findings show $100,000 in Arlington amounts to roughly $50,000 after adjusting for taxes and cost of living,” the rep noted to ARLnow.
In bottom-ranked New York City, that $100,000 amounted to an adjusted-for-cost-of-living $35,791. The same $100,000 salary in Memphis amounted to $86,444 in adjusted take-home pay, according to SmartAsset’s calculus.
The cost-of-living calculations take into account the local cost of “housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, and miscellaneous goods and services” as of fall 2022, the site notes.
Police investigate crash with vehicle overturned on N. Sycamore Street in 2021 (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Arlington County is one of the top 15 safest “cities” in the United States, according to a new set of rankings.
The number crunchers at SmartAsset looked at violent and property crime rates, as well as rates of vehicle-related deaths, drug-related deaths and excessive drinking. They ranked Arlington at No. 11, below No. 10 Yonkers, New York, No. 6 Alexandria and No. 1 Frisco, Texas, among others.
Arlington outperformed Alexandria in all published metrics, so it’s unclear why the charming city to our south was ranked higher. The county had significantly higher rates of violent and property crime than Frisco, however.
On the positive side, Arlington had the lowest rate of vehicle deaths — 3.1 per 100,000 residents — of any city in the top 15. That vehicle mortality rate was less than half that of any of the six Texas cities that topped the rankings.
Arlington is now in the third year of its Vision Zero plan to reduce or eliminate vehicle fatalities and severe injuries.
The crime data was primarily supplied by a 2021 FBI database, SmartAsset said. That year saw a decline in carjackings, car thefts and homicides in Arlington. The county has since seen a rise in carjackings and student overdoses, in particular, to start the year.
Top 15 Safest Cities in the U.S. rankings (via SmartAsset)
The restaurant, which opened in 2019, is helmed by “two chefs who pushed each other to create a first-class koshary in the suburban corridors of Washington,” wrote critic Tim Carman. The signature dish gets top billing in the review.
There are, perhaps, only a handful of moments in our eating lives that make us see a dish in a new light. This was one. Unlike my friend, I have had and enjoyed koshary numerous times. But King of Koshary’s version was different. I hit a kind of bliss point that words cannot capture. The condiments enveloped these grains and legumes, providing heat and aroma and order, but that alone didn’t explain my reaction (or that of my friend, who was pounding down that koshary by the spoonful). The dish reminded me, all over again, of the genius of necessity. Koshary, often called a “plate of the poor,” is further confirmation that a rewarding meal does not always begin with expensive ingredients. Paupers can eat like princes, for a small fraction of the cost, without any sense of self-delusion.
It has been a stellar start to the year for Arlington restaurants outside of the Metro corridors. Two weeks ago, four Arlington eateries made Washingtonian’s 100 Very Best Restaurants list, including CHIKO in Shirlington, Ruthie’s All-Day in Arlington Heights and Cafe Colline on Langston Blvd. SER in Ballston also made the Washingtonian list.
He wrote of Charga’s eclectic menu and marquee dish:
Charga specializes in street food from around the world, with an emphasis on plates of chicken. Peruvian pollo a la brasa. South African peri-peri. And two specimens from Pakistan, Chaudry’s homeland: brined-and-smoked sajji chicken, and skinless charga chicken, which is steamed and flash-fried. The latter two birds alone are worth a trip to Charga. But Chaudry, along with his uncle Iqbal Chaudry, doesn’t stop at chicken. They also serve kebabs, curries, quesadillas and more. Their free-form approach might confound those who prefer tidy categories for their restaurants. But as with the customers who enter their establishment, Iqbal and Asad commit themselves to each and every dish on the menu.
Asad Chaudry still remembers the first time he tried charga. He had flown to Pakistan for his brother’s wedding in 2012, and as part of the trip, Chaudry’s mom took him to her former neighborhood in Lahore, where they waited, and waited, in line at one of the city’s famous street vendors for a chance to bite into its singular chicken.
Chaudry knew enough about the dish, sometimes spelled chargha, to know how to eat it: He used a piece of naan to tear off a generous hunk of meat from the bird. He garnished the combination with masala onions and then dunked the bite in mint chutney. “When I tried it, I was like, ‘Man, this is amazing,'” he tells me one afternoon over the phone. “I was like, ‘I got to learn how to make it.'”
Chaudry tried to learn as much as he could on the ground in Lahore, but he admits his grasp of Pakistan’s mother tongues is shaky. But he established one important fact during his brief educational tour nearly a decade ago: The chicken is typically steamed and flash-fried, not cooked on a rotisserie as he had initially guessed. From there, Chaudry and his uncle, Iqbal Chaudry, researched and tested recipes until they had exactly what they wanted: their own take on one of Lahore’s signature dishes.
Charga is also highly rated among diners on Yelp, with a 4.5 star review average between today and the first review in 2017.
Carman’s 2022 casual restaurant list included another Arlington-connected restaurant: La Tingeria — which got its start as an Arlington food truck and was nearly shut down by the City of Falls Church after setting up its brick-and-mortar location at 626 S. Washington Street — ranked No. 4.
Cherry blossoms near the Memorial Bridge and the Rosslyn skyline in March 2022 (staff photo by Jay Westcott)
Arlington is the second-happiest place in the U.S., according to a new study.
The website SmartAsset ranked Arlington No. 2 on its new list of “Where Americans Are Happiest.” The county is second only to the Bay Area city of Sunnyvale, California, and ranks just ahead of Bellevue, Washington, which also happens to have a major Amazon office presence.
Arlington received high marks for its affluence, health and general quality of live.
While Arlington, Virginia ranks in the top seven across all three categories measured (personal finances, well-being and quality of life), the city ranks highest in the former. Specifically, roughly 48% of Arlington’s residents earn $100,000 or more (No. 5). Additionally, living costs make up less than 35% of the median household income (No. 6). The county in which Arlington is located also has the lowest amount of personal bankruptcy filings.
SmartAsset notes that the county stands out from other places in the top 10 in one notable way.
“Residents who’ve said ‘I do’ make up the majority of the population in all but one city: Arlington, Virginia, where the marriage rate is 44.0%,” the financial site wrote. “Frisco, Texas, which ranks No. 5 overall, has the highest marriage rate study-wide (62.6%).”
The top 10 happiest places in the country, according to SmartAsset, are listed below.
Sunnyvale, CA
Arlington, VA
Bellevue, WA
Fremont, CA
Frisco, TX
Plano, TX
Roseville, CA
San Jose, CA
Santa Clarita, CA
Irvine, CA
Location of happiest U.S. cities, according to new rankings (image via SmartAsset)
