Home & Living
The Young Family
With the market finally on the mend, we went house-hunting to come up with a list of more than 50 of the region’s best neighborhoods, from Annapolis to Roland Park to Havre de Grace, and then tracked down some of the folks buying there.
Westminster – Gregg Presbury, 40, a web developer, and his
wife, Marijka Grey, 38, a physician and medical administrator, faced a
challenge not unfamiliar to many couples: trying to find a home that
would make the commute a little more bearable—at least for one of them.
They were living in a townhome in Frederick, but Presbury’s job was
near Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall Airport and Grey’s was with
major medical group WellSpan with operations in Gettysburg, throughout
south-central Pennsylvania, and in Frederick County.
“We were looking for someplace a little closer to both our jobs,”
says Grey. “My husband doesn’t mind the drive too much, but especially
with me working on the administrative side in the York offices,
Frederick was too far.”
They chose Westminster, and ended up buying a four-bedroom house they
were already pretty familiar with, located in a Ryan Homes development
called Meadow Creek. “The agent likes to point out that I looked at this
three years ago, before we got married,” says Grey. And the move makes
even more sense now that the couple just had their first child,
6-week-old Sylvia.
What were they looking for in a neighborhood? “A good school district
was important, which Carroll County definitely has, and a nice
community feel was important, too,” says Grey. “We live on the outskirts
of Westminster, across the street from McDaniel College, where we can
take classes or go to concerts, and downtown Westminster is pretty cute,
too. You can get all the basic amenities there, but if we really need
more shopping, we can go to Owings Mills.”
And proof that the place has a neighborly touch came when they
weren’t even home, says Grey: “When we were out of town during a big
snowstorm, the neighbors plowed our driveway.”