Lenox Mall area (Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Roswell: crime, how much, buying a home)

[kaday]

Would this be a good place to live? Is Smith Elementary a good school? Have conducive to family life would this area be? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Brewboy]

This is in the heart of downtown Buckhead! Family life would consist of traffic problems constantly. If you like city living then this is the place for you! If you like quiet living, this is not the place for you. Crime in that area has been fairly bad in the past recent years as well!!! There have been several murders when the night clubs were there, but other then that it's a pretty decent area in the daytime.

[Prichard]

I've spent some time in a friend's home that is in Buckhead near the Lenox Mall area. In my opinion, this is a fantastic area. Some of the older houses are surprisingly affordable for what you get. And, the older houses are on fairly good sized lots, especially for being so close to town. I have jogged through out this part of Buckhead. Traffic is not a problem in the neighborhoods, which are nice and quiet for being so close to town. The houses sit on beautiful mature treed lots. If you work in Buckhead, you could ride a bicycle to work. If you work in Downtown, or Midtown, it is a very easy and quick commute. I don't know how good the public schools are in that area, but I suspect that many people who live in Buckhead send their kids to private schools anyway.

IMHO, Buckhead is the best value you will find in Metro Atlanta area. Buy an older house on a large lot....you can thank me in three years.

[xxman777]

I think Buckhead is an awesome area. Sure the traffic is bad on the main roads but there are lots and lots of side streets which run through the neighborhoods so it isn’t that hard to get around. Plus you are already so close in that anything you need is within a few miles.

Sure a few guys got shot at the clubs around so if you and your kids are hanging out at the night clubs at three in the morning you might have some issues with crime. Otherwise you should be fine. Property crimes aren’t much more common then they are in the suburbs.

Prichard is right; a lot of parents in Buckhead send their kids to private school but a few send theirs to public. Because the ones who do usually still have money the schools in Buckhead are generally very good. Lots of parental involvement, PTA’s are awesome, etc.

Personally I love the beautiful houses that line the Buckhead neighborhoods. Much more personality then the suburbs. I would recommend that area over anything outside the perimeter.

[kaday]

Thanks for your imput. what would the commute be like to the cumberland mall area?

[nrgpill]

I recommend the area between Peachtree and Roswell Rd as opposed to Peachtree and Buford Hwy.

[stvincent]

The North Buckhead Community, the area surrounding Lenox and Phipps, is a beautiful place to live. Its dominated by older homes and you can get a nice sized home on a quiet street for about $600,000. Sarah Smith Elementary School is the best elementary school in the Atlanta Public School system. If you wanted to consider private school I would suggest Westminster. Pace is so snobbish and Lovett is nortorious for its roudy rich kids and huge drug problem, that no one EVER talks about.

Your commute to the Cumberland area would only be like 20-25 minutes with traffic, which is excellent. This is provided of course that you take the backroads into Cobb COunty. West Buckhead(zip 30327) offers more new homes but they are significantly more expensive. Warren T. Jackson Elementary is the number two public school in the city. The school has an unusually high level of PTA participants and it just got the IB program at the elem. level. The homes range on the low end for $1.5m to upwards of $10 million. YET, if you can find a fixer-upper for about $700,000 and renovate it you would have made a worthy investment. The prices in that area are skyrocketing and your home could double in value over the next ten to twenty years. Plus, the area is only 5 to ten minutes away from the Cumberland/Galleria area.

I don't know what you can afford but if you are looking at buying a home in Buckhead, you can afford quite a bit more than the average person. You might as well invest in an area where your home can bring you a hefty return in the future.

[lolamom]

We moved here (N. Buckhead, about a mile north of Lenox) because the commute was awesome, and the shopping was great too. We spent a lot on our new home but we justified all of it because of being in the Sarah Smith school district.

These days, we wish we would have looked more closely at East Cobb, Sandy Springs, Cumberland/Galleria or Vinings area. Main reason is we are discovering the allure of private schools. We pay a ton in property taxes to live in Smith and yet we will probably need to send our kids to private school once they are out of 6th grade (and out of Smith). Right now, we have the kids in private preschool and are amazed by how much they are learning. We are loathe to take them out to put them in public schools next year. For these reasons, we wish we would have just either moved to Alpharetta and gone the whole public school route or moved somewhere where property taxes were not so much.

Lola

[kaday]

Thanks Lolamom that is very helpful information!