Help with possible move. (Baltimore, Columbia: condominiums, income, property taxes)

[Belvederesquare]

Having relocated to Baltimore City three years ago from Cincinnati we could not be happier with the decision. We live in North Baltimore in Belvedere Square and just love the area. We have an amazing community and the best neighbors one could ever dream of.
This past week a promotion was offered that would have my wife working in Bethesda. I suppose she could commute the distance but 1.5 hours on 95 every day is just silly. The Metro is an option but once again very time consuming.
SO the question to move has come up. We love the city and really don't want to leave but we might have no choice. We are looking at Columbia as an option but find it just too sterile and suburban and possibly DC proper but that is not all that appealing either.

So please feel free to offer some advise. Anyone around here make this commute daily and if so whats it like? How is living in Columbia?
What would you do?

Thanks for the help!
Vincent and Meg

[cutgarden]

Does your wife have to take the promotion? If not, if you're happy with where you are and your current income, there is no need to move. Money isn't everything. In fact, you could say it's highly over rated. Just my 2 pennies.

[rfstrong]

Honestly, if you are going to commute from Columbia to Bethesda, you may as well just stay in Baltimore-the traffic usually starts getting bad a little bit south of Columbia so I don't really think the move would be worth it.

[ebo202]

I would seriously consider the Rockville area then. Now that housing prices are coming down significantly, you can haggle with homeowners a lot more now. Not only that, but there is a huge glut of condominiums in the area, which is also driving prices down.

Columbia is a great little city, with easy access to Baltimore AND Washington. It has its own charm. Lots of good restaurants, the mall is clean and has good shops. Nice outdoors community with jogging paths and active county activities. Definitely appeals to the suburbanite crowd. The only thing i don't like about it is that a few residents have that "privledged" attitude about them, but not many. Rte 29 traffic IS bad, but moves suprisingly quick. Oh and by the way, Howard County has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, so watch out for that. Now that I think of it... Bethesda is really not that convenient to Columbia

Check out Rockville and Silver Spring.

[Belvederesquare]

Thanks for the input!