takahmamash: Except that in Israel the government wants to take yeshiva students (and girls, if you see the fine print) and put them into a military that sees one of its goals as being the secularizion of all Israels so there will be uniform culture (meaning that if you are conservadox or a left-wing religious zionist Israel is perfect, but not if you are frum).
MorahRach: In Baltimore, there are single family detached houses with respectable yards and driveways in the $100K-$125K range, generally built post-World War II, within a ten minute walk of the major shuls (including the German, Yeshivish, Hasidic and modern orthodox ones). For more money, you can a newer house. If you want to live in Baltimore country (a few blocks away) you pay at least twice as much for the house, but the tax rate is under half of the city (other differences is that Baltimore County has better public schools, which is why housing there is a premium – that can be important if one’s child is so special (i.e. handicapped) that they need to go to a non-Jewish school.
Also note that DC and Baltimore are in a relationship similar to Brooklyn and Manhattan (except that they only have separate teams in baseball and football, but do have separate newspapers). If general, Baltimore is frumer than DC, but there are plenty of modern orthodox and non-frum in Baltimore, and plenty of “penguins” in DC (or rather Montgomery County which includes Silver Spring, Rockville and Potomac). The heavily subsidized commuter trains connect Baltimore to DC (but as yet no one has managed to set up a minyan on them, many people drive to Silver Spring to make early minyans before continuing on to jobs in DC).