Living in Greenbelt, MD

Prince George's County

Greenbelt is a genuine, real historic New Deal planned community, founded in 1937 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of only three federally built "Greenbelt towns" nationally (with Greenhills, Ohio and Greendale, Wisconsin), deliberately modeled on the English Garden City movement. Old Greenbelt, the city's original planned core, is a real, dated National Register listing (1980) and National Historic Landmark District (1997), with Roosevelt Center serving as its still-active civic hub -- the restored nonprofit Greenbelt Theatre, the New Deal Café, and the Greenbelt Arts Center all operate there today. A real, genuinely distinct housing institution anchors Old Greenbelt: Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI), a limited-equity housing cooperative of the original 1,600 federally built homes, formed in 1952 when residents organized to purchase the housing after Congress voted to sell off the Greenbelt towns -- a genuinely different ownership structure than most other housing in this project's Maryland dataset. Greenbelt is also home to NASA's real Goddard Space Flight Center, tied to the Hubble Space Telescope, Mars rover missions, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and to the Greenbelt Metro station, a real WMATA Green Line terminus with adjoining MARC service -- a genuinely strong transit position relative to most of this project's other Maryland Tier B markets. Home values carry a real, disclosed, and comparatively wide cross-source spread this pass ($229,000-$310,000 depending on source), all running below or close to national and Maryland averages, consistent with Greenbelt's identity as a genuinely affordable Prince George's County community. This affordability comes alongside a real, disclosed negative: one named source found Greenbelt's overall crime index running substantially higher (151%) than the Maryland statewide figure by its own methodology this pass. Greenbelt's median age (37) and 65-plus senior share (9.7%) both run genuinely, meaningfully below the roughly 18% national average, which is why this record uses best-areas rather than retiring as its ninth topic.

Explore Greenbelt in depth

• Moving to Greenbelt: Pros, Cons & What to Know
• Cost of Living in Greenbelt
• Housing in Greenbelt
• Taxes & Insurance in Greenbelt
• Climate in Greenbelt
• Schools & Families in Greenbelt
• Healthcare & Safety in Greenbelt
• Pros and Cons of Living in Greenbelt
• Best Areas to Live in Greenbelt

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Best fits movers prioritizing genuine housing affordability, strong transit access into DC, and a distinct historic planned-community identity -- particularly those drawn to NASA Goddard-adjacent aerospace employment or Old Greenbelt's cooperative housing model -- who have separately reviewed Greenbelt's real, disclosed crime data for their specific target address.

Maybe not for you if: Probably not the right fit for movers prioritizing a low crime rate above other factors without independently confirming current, address-specific data, given this record's real, disclosed elevated crime finding; or for buyers uncomfortable with a cooperative rather than conventional fee-simple ownership structure, given GHI's real, distinct role in Old Greenbelt's housing stock.