Sue Deagle spent more than a year scouring neighborhoods nestled in a forest on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., before buying a 2-acre property in Great Falls, Va., in January 2019. It had a small A-frame house for $900,000 on a steep hill that backs up to a tributary stream of the Potomac River called Difficult Run. An apt metaphor, she thought at the time.

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