Baltimore, Maryland

What is it like to live in Baltimore?

Baltimore has many great things to offer. Despite it’s poor reputation the Inner Harbor is actually a booming tourist attraction with many restaurants and places to site see! Federal Hill is a short walk from the Inner Harbor and provides a beautiful view of the harbor and aquarium as well as downtown skyline!

Baltimore has also received high praise recently for the large innovation of restaurants and breweries in the area. The Federal Hill, Harbor East, Little Italy, Fells Point, Locust Point, and downtown area all are booming in the restaurant industries.

Living in Baltimore has its many perks such as lower cost of living than many other Eastern coast cities between Washington DC, NYC, and Boston. Baltimore is also very walkable, as many areas can be covered in an hour or two of walking (with site seeing stops along the way)

As someone who has lived in Baltimore it was an amazing experience and I highly encourage anyone who is interested in moving there to high consider. Many companies such as Under Armor and M&T Bank are beginning to change the Baltimore landscape by bringing in more jobs, especially to recent college graduates!

What is it like to live in Baltimore?

Baltimore is a really cool town that’s somewhat undiscovered. There’s a lot of opportunity for young professionals with tech start-ups on the rise and the real estate being super affordable. We have great places to eat from destination “hole-in-the-wall” restaurants like Water For Chocolate in Upper Fells Point to Japanese hot spots in Harbor East like Azumi. If you’re not from Baltimore, you may appreciate the city a lot more just because, when you’re new there’s a lot to discover. We have die hard sports fans here and Orioles’ and Ravens’ games are always a good time. We’re also just a few hours from NY and less than an hour from D.C.

What are your honest thoughts on living in Baltimore?

I have lived in this city all of my 53 years of life. I have had the pleasure of living in eight different neighborhoods in that span of time. Baltimore will make your heart swell, and give you a migraine, sometimes in one day. There are annual street festivals like Artscape, SoWeBo, Fell Point Fun Fest that bring people together and give you a chance to sample food and wares made by locals. Our transit system (I am carless) has many flaws, but if you can learn to be patient, it will get you where you are going. We have a ton of deeply ingrained, systemic problems that do not have easy answers. Redlining in the fifties pushed many affluent whites out to suburbia, as their fear of people that didn't look like them outweighed their love of our city. But if you take a walk through Mount Vernon on a sunny day, you'll see architecture, statuary, and walk the same streets as F.Scott Fitzgerald, Etta and Claribel Cone, Gertrude Stein, Cab Calloway, Eubie Blake and so many others. In short, Baltimore is a place to fall in love with, even though she might not always love you back.

What are your honest thoughts on living in Baltimore?

I’m 39 and bought a house in Fed Hill 3 years ago. My wife and I love it. We have 2 kids (5 and 2). You can find good schools up through 8th grade (and even 12th, but there’s some travel involved). There’s occasionally crime in the neighborhood. Car break-ins and thefts, an occasional mugging. But I walk my dog for a mile or two in a loop around the neighborhood every night and I’ve never had a problem. (TBF I’m a large man with a large dog, so take that FWIW).

If you buy a place be prepared for higher property taxes, which can be infuriating because the city SUCKS at a lot of the stuff you’d think those taxes go to.

There’s a lot going for it. Good parks, variety of restaurants including really good seafood and Italian food, public pools that are free and a really great sense of community. There’s the aquarium and the zoo and the science center which are all great.

If you really like city life and are willing to take the bad stuff with the good, I totally recommend it. But if cities aren’t your thing, there’s plenty of places in the burbs where you can get more space for your money, be less bothered by crime and still have a reasonable commute.

Living in Baltimore Maryland [EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW]