The first thing one needs to know about River Place is that it is home to 1700 households across four different buildings, each run by their own individual management companies.

River Place North is a cooperative of 400+ individually owned homes located in the River Place community, 1.5 blocks from Rosslyn Metro Station in Rosslyn, Virginia. Benefits of life at RPN include a resort style swimming pool with separate jacuzzi, gym with sauna and steam room, game room, market, cleaners, self storge facility, 24×7 security patrol, discounted tuition to on-site prep academy, credit union membership and free wifi.

Similarly, there are River Place East , River Place West, and River Place South.

Another important thing about River Place is that it’s a cooperative association, not a condo association.  There is a lot of confusion surrounding the difference between a condo and a coop.  Being a cooperative means that River Place provides homes to its shareholders. Each shareholder owns a stock certificate and a proprietary lease on a specific home in the association. River Place operate according to our governing documents.  Homes are individually owned, and board approval is not required to buy or sell a home.

There’s really no difference between how you live in a cooperative versus a condo.  There are slight differences in how you purchase and sell.  Your agent  can go into more detail.  Please call me and I’ll share more of the mundane details.

They are about 50% sold out, and prices have not dropped since they opened the development for sales more than 2 years ago.  Square footage of the units, whether one or three bedrooms, is relatively large compared to other condo buildings.  Quality of the materials used is simply outstanding (and gorgeous).  Simply elegant, avant garde for Arlington, very sophisticated, contemporary luxury. 

Here’s a checklist to consider when you think about purchasing in this building:

– all glass building? CHECK
– private elevator to your own residence? CHECK
– valet service so you don’t have to worry about parking your car? CHECK
– good-sized rooms (unlike many buildings in Clarendon)? CHECK
– extra large balconies?  CHECK
– concierge to take care of drycleaning, etc? CHECK
– indoor, heated pool? CHECK
– top-notch gym? CHECK
– fantastic views? CHECK

As you can guess, the price tag is steep. Think about $1million for a 1 bedroom up to $3million plus for a 3 bedroom, and that’s not even mentioning the $7million price tag on the 5 bedroom. That puts the 1-2 bedrooms in line with the Waterview and Wooster & Mercer Lofts, also good buildings (but no valet service….).

Hmmmm. Someone always has to up the ante.

View of Rosslyn from Georgetown DC / image courtesy of industriarts on Flickr

Arlington County produces some really great information about itself, and you just have to know where to go to get it. For Rosslyn data, take a look at this.  Really helpful, I think!

This building is described as a “stunning all-glass 26-story building…private elevators in most residences … exotic indoor pool with skylights … hotel-like service, valet, doorman and concierge.”

Rossyln is very popular as a place to live because it is spitting distance to Washington DC. Georgetown is just across the bridge. However, the kind of neighborhood feel that many people seek is just sort of lacking here. That of, can change, and probably will.

In the meantime, there are some pretty terrific new condo buildings going up, and wow, if you are looking for a beautiful view of the city you can spend some big bucks, live in an absolutely gorgeous townhouse, and throw one heck of a 4th of July party. You wouldn’t have to mess with taking the metro downtown, though of course you could because the stop is right there.