Here’s How I Search For The Right Atlanta Suburb

When I'm trying to find the right Atlanta suburb to move to, here's how I narrow down my search when looking for the right area. First off, there's going to be a few different factors that really help narrow down the right area. There's going to be factors like the school ratings for the area, the home prices is certainly going to be a big one, also the crime or the safety. That's certainly going to be a big factor for many people. And then another one is walkability. Many people want to live in an area where it's easy to walk around or maybe it's a short drive to like a city center. And so we're going to talk about how to find the best area for all of these different factors. What's up, y'all? My name is Victor with Atlanta Suburban Living. We put out videos every week about what it's like to live in Atlanta and the suburbs of Atlanta. When it comes to school ratings, you really want to look online for which school districts have the best school ratings. And so you obviously don't want to be in a city where the school ratings are like a four out of 10 or something garbage, like a three out of 10, like those kind of school districts are clearly not the right one. And so we're looking for school districts that have much better ratings. Some of the best websites that I like to use for finding the best school ratings are niche.com. They have kind of a system that's like an A, B, C, D kind of system, A plus for the best ones, maybe an A minus for some of the schools. And then there's also greatschools.org. This is also a good one. It's a little more narrow on greatschools.org though. It is kind of like one through 10. You either have a 10 out of 10 or a nine out of 10. And so this kind of is a bit more limiting, but on greatschools.org, you can also see things like the percentage of the students that graduate or the percentage of the students that get a certain score on the SAT who go to that school. So there's a lot of statistics on greatschools.org. Either way, you really want to take all of this information with a grain of salt because niche.com could say that a certain school district is an A plus, but then greatschools.org could say that it's a seven out of 10. And the residents of that area that belonged to that school district could have a completely different opinion than those two websites. And so in my opinion, the best thing to do is to take a look at all of the different sources to gather your own opinion about that school district. When it comes to finding home prices, one of the best sources is going to be Zillow or realtor.com. That's also a great website or also Redfin. Redfin is a good one. I see sometimes people looking on websites like Trulia or I think there's another one in my opinion. I don't think Trulia is a very accurate website or even a very up-to-date websites like Zillow or realtor.com. They tend to be a lot more up-to-date when there's a price change on a home, they update their websites much faster, or when a home is sold, they actually update their website. And so you kind of have a good idea of what houses are for sale, how much they're asking, and also the sold price for those houses. Don't confuse this, however, with like the Zestimate. I'm by no means saying that the Zestimate is accurate. Sometimes they might get it accurate, but it's not very common. I mean, Zestimate will change day to day, but the home value is not actually changing day to day. But the computer algorithm that is determining the Zestimate is sometimes completely bonkers. And while again, they may get it right, sometimes it is not a credible source for understanding the value of a home. In my opinion, the much better way to do it is to look at the average sold price of the homes in the neighborhood. This is going to give you a much better understanding of home prices and home values. When you're looking for crime ratings in an area, you obviously want to be in a very safe area. It's hard to find crime ratings online. As someone who does this for a living, I'm always trying to understand the crime rates in these areas, especially because many people ask like, what is the crime like in Atlanta? Or what is the crime like in Marietta? And you don't want to be subjective about this. I want to give like actual facts. And so the best website that I have found lately for understanding crime rates is crimegrade.org. They have like this heat map. You can like zoom into an area. Maybe you put in the city name or maybe you put in a zip code and you can zoom right into that city and it'll show green for areas that are super safe, yellow for medium and red for super dangerous areas. And while I don't completely agree with this website, for example, Marietta, they have some of the best parts of Marietta as a red area. I don't necessarily agree with that, but it is the most accurate that I have found. So if you're looking for a way to judge the safety or the crime of a specific area, crimegrade.org is one of the ones. Another big factor that many people want in a new home, in a new area is walkability. This is a tough one as well. If you have any questions about a walkable area or whether this city you can get around easily with or without a vehicle, feel free to call, text, or email me anytime. I'm the one who answers all of those phone calls and those emails and those text messages. Thank you so much to everybody who has reached out. I'm always happy to help. But walkability is certainly a big factor for many people. Keep in mind that when it comes to the suburbs of Metro Atlanta, many of these city suburbs have a downtown area or like a city center. And while the downtown area for these suburbs is easily walkable, you typically can like walk to the local shops and restaurants. All of the city is not like this. For example, downtown Alpharetta, they've got a great little downtown area. You can walk to the ice cream shop or you can walk to the restaurants or whatever, but all of Alpharetta does not look like the downtown area. These are suburban areas with neighborhoods that are enormous and you're for the most part going to be car dependent if you live in one of these suburbs. But if you happen to live in that small part of the city where the downtown area is or the city center area is, then yes, it would be easily walkable. Most people, however, including myself, we just my family and I, we just drive to Marietta Square or we drive to downtown Alpharetta or town center in Suwannee and then we go to one of those restaurants there and we walk to the ice cream shop and then my wife wants to walk to the shopping area. So we walk around and shop some more as well. And so that is typically what most people do who live in these suburbs. A big warning about moving to the Atlanta area and trying to pick the right area. You don't want to necessarily look at the distance from your new home to wherever you're going daily. Maybe you're moving here for work or you're moving here to be closer to family. And like, so you're like, oh, my family lives in DeKalb County and I want to live in Marietta. And maybe you check the miles from Marietta to DeKalb and Google says that the mileage is one thing. You can't really rely on that mileage. You really need to look at the drive time from the area where you're going to be living to your commute to work, for example. And so while it may say 20 miles for your commute to work, the drive time may be more like 45 minutes or an hour. This is far more typical here in Metro Atlanta. So just a word of warning when you're looking at the distance from two places in Metro Atlanta, the time is far more significant than the miles. And a general rule of thumb when you are picking a new area in Metro Atlanta is that the areas that are closer to the city of Atlanta are obviously less of a commute to Atlanta, but more expensive. And then the areas that are farther away from the city of Atlanta have a longer commute to Atlanta, but are far less expensive. For example, Sandy Springs is just outside of Atlanta. I mean, Sandy Springs and the city of Atlanta border each other, but the average home price in Sandy Springs is like $800,000. Compare that to a city like Acworth, which is very far from the city of Atlanta, and it would be a very long commute if you were working in Atlanta and living in Acworth, but the average home price in Acworth is closer to $400,000. And so that is kind of a general rule of thumb for all of the areas of Metro Atlanta. One thing that I always find funny when I am searching on Google Maps, especially for different areas in Metro Atlanta, for example, if I'm helping someone understand, hey, look, this area is much nicer, or this area is not really so nice. I often see that on Google Maps, they have labels. There's like tons of labels. And while some of those labels make sense, some of those labels don't make sense and can really trip you up if you're not familiar with the area. For example, Powder Springs on Google Maps is like the label is really far south on Google Maps. But in my opinion, Powder Springs is really farther north than where the label shows. It's really closer to where the Lost Mountain Park label is on Google Maps. And so this is significant because you may think, oh, well, Powder Springs is farther south than I really want to live, but Powder Springs is actually a bit farther north than what Google would indicate. Or another one would be like where Google says that it's got the label for Marietta. And so you know where the city of Marietta is, but then also have a label for like East Cobb as if East Cobb is a city. While Marietta is a city, East Cobb is not a city. East Cobb is not, in fact, anything formal. It's just kind of a nickname that the residents have of the area. But Google has the two labeled equally. So sometimes people think, oh, I want to live in the city of East Cobb. It's confusing. I know. And I wish I had a better way around that, but just something to think about. I know that the labels there can be very confusing. And then a big one that you really need to take into consideration is that when you have a list of like all your things that you're wanting in a new home, like maybe you're wanting to live close to a downtown area or in a walkable area, you're wanting the areas with the best school ratings or the areas with the lowest crime. Naturally, those are going to be the most expensive areas. There's a few parts of Metro Atlanta where I think you can get a lot of those things and not have to break the bank areas like Powder Springs. That's a really a good one where you get a lot of great schools, low crime, very family friendly kind of area. And the home prices are not crazy high. But then there's also the areas like Alpharetta, the most popular part of Metro Atlanta, where you do find all of those things, very low crime, almost no crime, the best public schools, great commute to work. So naturally that's going to be a very expensive part of Metro Atlanta to live in. So here's a few things that you can do to kind of get around this issue of wanting to get all of those requirements met, but also not wanting to break the bank. One thing is you don't necessarily want to live within the downtown part of one of the suburbs. You're talking about a significant increase in home prices. If you can live just outside of the downtown area, maybe a five-minute drive, and then you can walk to those areas, that is a much better way to get a lower home price. Another one is the school ratings. In my opinion, there is a very small difference between the schools that are rated an 8 out of 10 and a school that is rated a 10 out of 10 on greatschools.org. You can have your student or your child go to an 8 out of 10 school and have an excellent experience. Maybe they have a great teacher. Conversely, you can go to a 10 out of 10 school and have a terrible experience or a terrible teacher, and you're like, oh, well, I chose this area because it's the best school. Well, it's a very small difference between these two kind of school ratings. And then, as I mentioned earlier, the crime map that I have, crimegrade.org, you really kind of have to look at that with a grain of salt as well. Some of those red areas that they have labeled as super dangerous are, in my opinion, not very dangerous. Maybe they're more like a yellow, that the company that sponsors that website is a security system website. So naturally, they're going to make it seem like it's a little worse than it really is, but it has been very reliable for many of the cities that I've been looking at. For sure, one of the biggest factors concerning where you're going to live in Metro Atlanta has to do with the cost of living. I've an entire video outlining the cost of living in Metro Atlanta. You can check it out right here. I'll see you in the next one.