Buying Into Baltimore

She found a real estate agent and then a condo in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, near the train station, but it was sold before she had a chance to bid. "I said that does it, I'm getting my [butt] to Baltimore."

To reach her job at the University of the District of Columbia, she sometimes drives and "when I'm working normal hours" takes the train, driving 10 minutes to MARC's West Baltimore station, riding to Union Station, then taking the Metro Red line to work -- a little more than an hour.

"I used to think Baltimore was the backwoods, with nothing to do," she said. "I swore I'd never leave D.C., and now here I am in Baltimore."

According to Live Baltimore, about 24 percent of those moving to the city are coming from Washington, compared with half of that before the campaign began. Its monthly happy hours are a relaxed blend of marketing and mixing. As added incentives, raffle prizes have included $10,000 down payments and $250 towards home inspections.

One happy hour in February, at Ozio on M Street NW, drew 153 people. "We have high-rise condos starting in the low 200s, and you can see the water," Tracy Gosson, Live Baltimore's executive director, told the crowd. "Who's giving away $10,000 in D.C.? No, I didn't think so." The occasional grumble from former Washingtonians, she said later, is about lackluster train service to the District, not about Baltimore itself.

To lure people to its events, Live Baltimore does low-budget advertising. "It's better in Baltimore," boasted one of its ads in Express, the Washington Post-owned free newspaper ubiquitous on the Metro.

Another Express ad, this one promoting a Greenbelt event in May, showed President Bush saying, "NSA phone records indicate you're making a lot of calls to Baltimore. . . . Why Don't You Just Move Here?"

That gathering, at Jasper's, drew a smaller crowd of 53 people. Chris Mundy was there, at his third such event, pitching 1209 North Charles, a condominium development in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. "It's good networking for prospective buyers," said Mundy, sales director for the condo. "We've gotten some people through the doors to put contracts down."

Mundy, meanwhile, commutes to Baltimore from his home in Fairfax County. It's a long commute, he said. Would he consider moving? "It might happen," he said. "Some friends have begun to look. When you compare it to D.C., you know, you can find much more competitive prices there."

Or, as Gosson put it, in Baltimore, "It's Chevy Chase at a price that's Anacostia."

LaTonya Parker, 35, moved from east of the Anacostia to Bolton Hill last August, after adding herself to Live Baltimore's 9,000-name e-mail list. She continues to work in Silver Spring for Discovery Communications, commuting 40 minutes each way by car. A native Washingtonian, she owned a condo in Northeast and wanted more space.

"I couldn't afford anything bigger in the city and still wanted to live in a city, so I chose Baltimore," she said. "At first, it was a little difficult; it wasn't as familiar. I continued to go to restaurants, clubs in D.C. because I didn't know where to go. Now I hang out in Mount Vernon; it's kind of like a Capitol Hill area, with lot of boutiques, restaurants, very trendy."