Updated October 2026
You have the job. Maybe it's orders to the Pentagon, maybe it's an offer letter for an office on K Street. Either way, the first question isn't which neighborhood is prettiest.
It's where your train leaves from.
Here's the short answer for Pentagon commuters: start with the blocks around the King St-Old Town, Braddock Road and Potomac Yard Metro stations. Both the Blue and Yellow lines run from each of those stations to the Pentagon with no transfer. If your office is in DC, the answer depends on which part of downtown, and that's where the line you live on starts to matter.
If you're still deciding whether Alexandria is the right city at all, our guide to moving to Alexandria, VA covers the bigger picture. This piece is about one thing: matching the address to the office.
Start with the office, not the neighborhood
"A commute to DC" isn't a commute. A commute to a specific building, at a specific hour, is.
Before you look at a single listing, write down three things:
- The exact building and entrance you'll use. The Pentagon, the Mark Center in Alexandria's West End, an agency near L'Enfant Plaza and a firm near Farragut Square are four different commutes from the same front door.
- Your real arrival time. An early report time and a mid-morning start can feel like two different cities.
- How many days a week you'll actually go in. A hybrid schedule changes the math. A longer ride twice a week can be worth a bigger yard. A longer ride five days a week usually isn't, in our experience.
Then ask your office one more question: how does parking work for someone in your role? Don't assume you can drive in until someone at work says so.
The Metro spine: where Pentagon commuters usually look first
Every Metro station in and around Alexandria reaches the Pentagon without a transfer. The difference is which line, and how you get to the platform.
Old Town and Rosemont: King St-Old Town station
King St-Old Town is served by both the Blue and Yellow lines, and it sits next to the Alexandria VRE station. Rosemont's streets sit just west and north of the station, and much of Old Town is a walk or a short DASH ride away.
The trade-off is the housing itself: historic rowhouses, older condo buildings, and parking that takes some planning. If you're weighing these neighborhoods against each other, our piece on choosing between Old Town, Del Ray and Rosemont walks through how they live day to day.
Del Ray and Potomac Yard: Braddock Road and Potomac Yard stations
Potomac Yard station opened the northeast corner of the city to rail. Depending on your block, Del Ray residents walk or bike to Potomac Yard or Braddock Road, and both stations carry Blue and Yellow trains to the Pentagon.
In our experience, buyers are often surprised by how close Metro feels from parts of Del Ray. Check the walk from the actual house, though. A few blocks makes a difference on a January morning.
Carlyle and Eisenhower East: Eisenhower Avenue station
The newer buildings around Carlyle and Eisenhower Avenue sit between two stations. King St-Old Town is close on one side; Eisenhower Avenue is on the other. Eisenhower Avenue is Yellow line only, which still runs straight to the Pentagon.
The West End: Van Dorn Street station and the Mark Center
Van Dorn Street is Blue line only, and like the others it reaches the Pentagon without a transfer. Much of the West End sits farther from any platform, so many West End commutes pair a bus or a short drive with the train.
The West End also holds the Mark Center, a Department of Defense office complex. If that's your building, the commute calculation flips. You may want to live near Seminary Road and the West End, not near a Metro station at all.
Alexandria addresses outside the City of Alexandria
Here's where buyers get tripped up. An Alexandria mailing address doesn't mean the City of Alexandria. Huntington, Belle Haven, New Alexandria, Fort Hunt and Kingstowne all carry Alexandria addresses, and all of them are in Fairfax County. That changes your tax bill, your local government and your school system, so confirm the jurisdiction for any house you're serious about.
For commuting, the Fairfax side has its own logic:
- Huntington has its own Yellow line station, the southern end of the line, with a direct ride to the Pentagon.
- Belle Haven and New Alexandria sit along the George Washington Memorial Parkway just south of Old Town. Getting to Metro usually means a drive or a bus to Huntington or King St-Old Town, and the Mount Vernon Trail runs along the river north toward Old Town and Arlington for anyone who wants to ride.
- Kingstowne works best for people who drive or use the Franconia-Springfield end of the Blue line. Our Kingstowne commute guide breaks down the Metro and interchange options in detail.
- Fort Hunt is usually a driving commute. For anyone posted to Fort Belvoir, that's often the point.
Commuting into DC: which line, which district
The Blue and Yellow lines split after the Pentagon, and that split decides a lot.
- Yellow crosses the Potomac straight to L'Enfant Plaza and continues into the Penn Quarter side of downtown. If you work at a federal agency in Southwest DC, Yellow is usually your line.
- Blue swings north through Rosslyn into Foggy Bottom, Farragut West and Metro Center. If your office is in the K Street corridor or near the White House, Blue is the more direct ride.
That's why the stations with both lines (King St-Old Town, Braddock Road and Potomac Yard) are so useful for a household with two commuters headed to different parts of the city. Eisenhower Avenue and Huntington are Yellow only; Van Dorn Street is Blue only.
There's one more option worth knowing. VRE commuter trains stop at the Alexandria station next to King St-Old Town and run north to L'Enfant and Union Station on a weekday commuter schedule. VRE doesn't stop at the Pentagon, so it's a DC tool, not a Pentagon one.
National Landing and Amazon
Crystal City and Pentagon City sit between Alexandria and the Pentagon on both lines, which makes Arlington's National Landing a short ride from most Alexandria stations. We wrote about why Del Ray and nearby Rosemont appeal to professionals at Amazon's Arlington headquarters, and the same logic applies to anyone working in those towers.
What homes sold for in 22307 in August 2026
Buyers looking at the Fairfax side often ask what the river neighborhoods south of Old Town trade for. In the 22307 ZIP code, which includes Belle Haven and New Alexandria, 10 homes closed in August 2026, compared with 17 in August 2025, according to our analysis of Bright MLS closed-sale data. The median sale price was $1,187,500 in August 2026, up from $610,000 a year earlier. Median days on market was 17 days, compared with 27 days in August 2025.
That's a big jump in the August median from one year to the next. Our read: with that few sales in a single month, a handful of larger detached homes can pull the median a long way. Treat it as a snapshot of what closed, not a price for Belle Haven or a forecast for the ZIP. It also says nothing about prices in Old Town, Del Ray or the West End, which sit in the City of Alexandria.
Figures are our analysis of Bright MLS closed-sale records for all residential sales in ZIP code 22307 in Fairfax County. They are not Bright MLS published statistics, and the ZIP code is not the City of Alexandria or any single neighborhood.
How we'd test a commute before you buy
In our experience, four habits save people the most second-guessing after the move.
Ride it at your real hour. Run the trip in WMATA's trip planner for your actual arrival time on a weekday. Then, if you can, ride it once in person. Travel times shift with the hour and the service day.
Test the ride home, too. The evening trip is the one people forget. If you work late shifts, check the last trains and buses before you fall in love with a house far from a station.
Walk the first mile. The distance from the front door to the platform matters more than the distance on a map. Hills, crossings and dark stretches all count.
Have a backup. A bus line, a bike route or a second station within reach turns a bad morning into a minor one.
If you're coming here on federal or military orders, our guide to federal and military relocation in Northern Virginia covers the timing and logistics that tend to come with a report date.
Talk it through with us
Elizabeth Lucchesi founded The LizLuke Team, has spent more than twenty years in residential real estate, and lives in Del Ray. Most of our business comes from referrals and repeat clients. We work the whole market, small condos through the high end. You can meet the team here.
It all starts with a conversation.
The LizLuke Team at LONG & FOSTER REAL ESTATE INC. 110 N Royal St, Ste 300,
Alexandria, VA 22314. Office 703.683.0400. The LizLuke Team (703) 868-5676. Virginia License #0225069250.
Equal Housing Opportunity.
All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Sources
- Bright MLS closed-sale data, Alexandria 22307, August 2025 and August 2026, pulled September 27, 2026
