I'm in Laurel, halfway between DC and Balt. between I95 and the BW Parkway. It's your basic suburb town, with a MARC station for commuting either way. Howard, Prince George's, Montgomery, and Anne Arundel counties come together here so you have your choice of county governments, tax rates, and school systems but I don't know anything about the schools, sorry. I live in PG and work just across the line in Howard, a long, boring 2.4 mile commute
. Good news is that there's a good shop for general mechanical work on TR's and a machine shop that knows how to build them, here in Laurel. Parts of Bowie seem pretty nice, too, about 10 miles southeast of Laurel and close to the end of the Green line on the DC metro. Montgomery Co. is very expensive unless you go 15-20 miles north on I270, and the Red line metro doesn't go far enough that direction. I don't know the VA side at all.
The agent I used when I bought my house last year was very helpful. His name is Ken Montville, and his web site is
www.homes-in-md.com I mention the web site because he has a nice search engine for real estate. It would definitely be worth spending some time on his site (or any other, for that matter) looking at housing prices to help your decision making along.
