SperlingViews - Hagerstown, Maryland

Life Living. [read more...]

on your home page you have Martinsburg listed in Maryland, Martinsburg is in West Virginia.[read more...]

I spent several months in Hagerstown and thoroughly enjoyed it. The area is flat and rolling and a senic mountain rises in the east. I used to love driving around the side roads there. The roads are very well maintained. I especially liked the restaurants. There was a place, I believe named Minard's, that had delicious spaghetti with homemade sauce. There was a restaurant to the north just across the Pennsylvania line that served home-cooked meals. It was on a farm and I believe that they raised much of the food they served in the restaurant.[read more...]

Hagerstown definitely has its ups and downs and not a lot in between. My husband and I moved there with our 3 children a couple of years ago. On the upside, it IS a lot cheaper than the Frederick area where he was working. On the downside, we live in city limits and have an OUTRAGEOUS (I mean, WOW) property tax bill. It's hard to understand why considering there is only one nice street in downtown and the rest of it looks like a dirty,decaying ghetto complete with the fashion statements to boot. There is a lot to do in the surrounding areas-the county is ripe with history and outdoor activites. There is serious crime problem within city limits, but the surrounding rural areas are good. The public school system is populated with more underachieving schools than reputable ones, so you definitely have to do your homework if you send your kids there. A lot of my neighbors sent their kids into the surrounding areas for school, rather than the local ones. There are a lot of uneducated people and a lot of hypocrisy in the city offices. All in all, we found that the best way to live here is to find your niche in a church or in a good neighborhood-we made some of the best friends we've ever had there![read more...]

I have lived over twenty years in Hagerstown. In the last four years ,it has become a horrible place to live. Healthwise, there is a terrible odor that comes and goes and will give you a headache and probably a lot worse than that. This odor began three years ago and might be coming from a local plant, but the city and county health department have done nothing about it.There is overdevelopment here and housing costs have skyrocketed as has crime. It is hot and humid in summer and can be snowy and freezing cold in winter.My water bill hs doubled in the last three years and electric and gas aren't far behind. If you are rich and have lost your sense of smell, maybe you could stand it here. I am looking to sell and move out.[read more...]

I was born and raised in Hagerstown (against my will) ha ha. I lived there for 24 years before moving to Houston 3.5 yrs ago. Hagerstown has gone from a very rural place to almost a fringe of DC. It's a weird mix of nice country folks, white trash, wanna be thugs (in the city limits), and yuppies. Things that are good about Hagerstown: pretty affordable housing (for the east coast), the smaller towns outside of Hagerstown, proximity to outdoor adventuring, my family :-). Things that are bad about Hagerstown: Lack of culture due to close minded locals, lack of job opportunites and low pay for young professionals, Commute to DC or Baltimore is long and getting longer, night life is boring and revolves around weak clubs and dive bars. This may very well be a great place to be in 10 to 15 years, but the city has to do some major revitalization and liven the place up a little.[read more...]

On the flip side, I won't be totally negative about my experience - there really are some nice things about Hagerstown. There are great old houses and buildings if you're into that like I am. The town (I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to call this place a city) is very old and has great history - Antietam battlefield is nearby, too. There are some nice parks - City Park is particularly lovely and there is a pretty cool little art museum there. All in all it's a pretty quiet place to live. It's a great place for people who are raising families or thinking of starting one, especially if you're more of a homebody and don't feel the need to go out a lot or actively seek entertainment. It's pleasantly rural with some city-like amenities, but beware - it's quickly becoming another extension of DC suburbia in the way that Frederick has (if you're familiar with the area). It's not as crowded as some areas, but it's definitely taking the same form...same types of shopping centers, same chain stores and restaurants. I guess there are few places that you're going to escape that entirely... [read more...]

Hagerstown is...interesting. I have lived here for almost 3 years now and I'm ready to leave. I am originally from the DC area and after attending college in VA, I landed a sweet job in Frederick, MD. The problem was that I couldn't afford to live in Frederick. Everyone told me to go to Hagerstown because it was much more affordable. This was true. I bought a house a half-hour away for less than half the price I would have paid for it in Frederick. This is changing though, as more and more commuters are moving to Hagerstown. Homes have appreciated more than 20% since I bought my house 2 years ago. For people that work in Frederick, DC, or Baltimore this is a great place to buy right now in terms of cost of living (if you don't mind the commute). For people that have lived in Hagerstown for years...it's not. Hagerstown is traditionally a blue collar town and the people that have lived there for a long time are now struggling to deal with the rapidly increasing cost of living. It's exploding in the same way that Frederick did. The oddest part about this explosion is...there's not much that Hagerstown has to offer besides cheap housing. I would not recommend moving here if you are young and/or single - there are a few interesting bars, but there isn't much else in the form of entertainment or ways to meet people. There are a few nice independent restaurants around town, but far greater is the number of generic chains. There is technically a downtown area, but there really isn't too much in it - a few good restaurants, a few high-priced boutiques owned by people with old money that could care less if they sold anything at all, a lot of dive bars, and recently a small branch of the University of Maryland. The culture is lacking, unless you consider "redneck" a form of culture. I guess some might... Let's put it this way - the area is not very diverse. I think they are trying to appeal to a more urban group of people with the new influx from DC, but the city council is notorious for arguing a lot and for not being able to accomplish much of anything. On the flip side, I won't be totally negative about my experience - there really are some nice things about Hagerstown. There are great old houses and buildings if you're into that like I am. The town (I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to call this place a city) is very old and has great history - Antietam battlefield is nearby, too. There are some nice parks - City Park is particularly l[read more...]