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1. I read about Atlanta being in Dixie Alley for tornados. Are there places in the area that are LESS prone to them? It sounds like having a basement in any case would be a huge advantage?
2. Houston housing is getting really expensive, especially for houses that made it through Harvey without even a drop of flooding. I couldn't afford to buy my own house today, or live anywhere even close to where I live now.
3. Specifically for ATLJan: I actually like that property. Alas, my wife is lukewarm on it.
4. I took state income tax into account, and asked for and received a raise to compensate for it, so I would't be taking a pay cut.
5. Buckhead felt a LOT like the Galleria area. Pretty much the same traffic too.
6. Based on the suggestions, we are seeing seeing stuff we like in the Marietta, Lithia Springs, and Douglasville areas. The Realtor.com crime heat map seems to suggest that the areas away from the city centers of Marietta and Douglasville are low in crime, and Lithia Springs seems to be low crime as well.
7. New question: Thoughts on Cartersville? There seems to be a lot of construction up that way, but I didn't find anything significant or recent when I searched this forum for that town. Is it too far out there to be a real contender?
Large portions of Houston are built on flood plains and bayou adjacent areas that should have never been developed. There have been several big rain events over the past few years (including several this year prior to Harvey) that have caused widespread flooding, including submerged freeways. That is extremely uncommon here.
This is VERY true. Houston had flooding in 2016 (called the Tax Day Floods locally) from just a normal heavy rain event.
Our house didn't get a drop of flooding during Harvey, but part of my reason for moving is that I am not sure that existing flood patterns are going to continue to hold true as more open space is paved over. There are at least three brand new developments in my area right now where there used to be trees and fields.
I actually live in this area and have for years, you don't. You clearly don't know what you are talking about here. Again, this is inaccurate advice.
You're about to make my day interesting
Congrats on living there for four years..although..you're also incredibly mistaken to say that I haven't lived in Tucker...I have. Right off Lavista to be precise. I've lived in the Metro off and on since 93 and have had my fare share of nearly every suburb asside regardless of the "four years" you spent in tucker and maybe some personal first hand experience there.. I also work hand in hand with a real estate and have a pretty good clue as to what the average buyer is going to spend in any given area of the Metro.
Lastly though, just as a brief and innocent little search, not even diving deep here... https://www.trulia.com/GA/Tucker/
I don't see much for under $200k there... no offense... but I really don't.
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Originally Posted by JMatl
And the homes would be more like from the 60's and 70's, not the 80's. You should really stick to what you actually know when doling out advice for newcomers.
Thank you.... for strengthening my point.
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Originally Posted by JMatl
Again, you are guessing here - and you would be very wrong.
I love how in the previous comment you ask that I stick to what I know yet you also have no factual evidence to back this claim up, because after researching, it clearly shows that I'm quite close to my original claim.
Checking the index between Atlanta and Houston - while Houston does have higher numbers, the difference are margina at best...which is the point I made in my original post as well.
Large portions of Houston are built on flood plains and bayou adjacent areas that should have never been developed. There have been several big rain events over the past few years (including several this year prior to Harvey) that have caused widespread flooding, including submerged freeways. That is extremely uncommon here.
I'll give you that one... however, we have had several storms in the past that have caused pretty intensive flooding and washed away bridges (Five Forks Trkm, Peachtree Dunwoody (between Buckhead and Perimeter), ect - those bridges were washed out) and while Houston does get its fare share of bad weather / flooding - nothing on the scale of Irma has occured to Houston (or any American city besides New Orleans) within any known recorded historical period of time, thus which is why I call it a freak occurrence. Houston overall is more prone to Hurricane damage / flooding than Atlanta though. I won't deny that.
Last edited by Need4Camaro; 11-26-2017 at 12:35 PM..
1. I read about Atlanta being in Dixie Alley for tornados. Are there places in the area that are LESS prone to them? It sounds like having a basement in any case would be a huge advantage?
2. Houston housing is getting really expensive, especially for houses that made it through Harvey without even a drop of flooding. I couldn't afford to buy my own house today, or live anywhere even close to where I live now.
3. Specifically for ATLJan: I actually like that property. Alas, my wife is lukewarm on it.
4. I took state income tax into account, and asked for and received a raise to compensate for it, so I would't be taking a pay cut.
5. Buckhead felt a LOT like the Galleria area. Pretty much the same traffic too.
6. Based on the suggestions, we are seeing seeing stuff we like in the Marietta, Lithia Springs, and Douglasville areas. The Realtor.com crime heat map seems to suggest that the areas away from the city centers of Marietta and Douglasville are low in crime, and Lithia Springs seems to be low crime as well.
7. New question: Thoughts on Cartersville? There seems to be a lot of construction up that way, but I didn't find anything significant or recent when I searched this forum for that town. Is it too far out there to be a real contender?
You really don't want to go to the northwest if you are working in the Perimeter Mall area. The only reasonable way to get there is on 285N, which is very congested and about to start construction at the 400 intersection. You should look to the northeast or east. Atlanta has very bad roads for suburb to suburb commutes. Think Houston circa 1980 before all the arterial improvements, Beltway 8 and the Grand Parkway.
As for tornados, Southwest Georgia is "Dixie Alley." Atlanta itself probably isn't any worse than Houston for tornados. The main danger from rain storms isn't flooding, its trees falling on your house or car or power lines.
1. I read about Atlanta being in Dixie Alley for tornados. Are there places in the area that are LESS prone to them? It sounds like having a basement in any case would be a huge advantage?
2. Houston housing is getting really expensive, especially for houses that made it through Harvey without even a drop of flooding. I couldn't afford to buy my own house today, or live anywhere even close to where I live now.
3. Specifically for ATLJan: I actually like that property. Alas, my wife is lukewarm on it.
4. I took state income tax into account, and asked for and received a raise to compensate for it, so I would't be taking a pay cut.
5. Buckhead felt a LOT like the Galleria area. Pretty much the same traffic too.
6. Based on the suggestions, we are seeing seeing stuff we like in the Marietta, Lithia Springs, and Douglasville areas. The Realtor.com crime heat map seems to suggest that the areas away from the city centers of Marietta and Douglasville are low in crime, and Lithia Springs seems to be low crime as well.
7. New question: Thoughts on Cartersville? There seems to be a lot of construction up that way, but I didn't find anything significant or recent when I searched this forum for that town. Is it too far out there to be a real contender?
Cartersville is 40 miles from Perimeter Center and is VERY redneck so i wouldn't recommend that area.
Great! It's nice to have an interesting Sunday afternoon.
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Congrats on living there for four years..although..you're also incredibly mistaken to say that I haven't lived in Tucker...I have. Right off Lavista to be precise.
In your rush to prove yourself right, you aren't even paying attention at this point.
I said I have lived here for years, not four. As of last month, 23 years to be exact. Prior to that, I lived in Midtown for 9 years. And I never said I lived in Tucker either, I live in what is now Chamblee after the recent annexation. We were talking about the entire general Northeast side, which I certainly know better than you think you do.
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I've lived in the Metro off and on since 93 and have had my fare share of nearly every suburb asside regardless of the "four years" you spent in tucker and maybe some personal first hand experience there..
How nice. I've been here permanently since '86. And it would take many years longer than you have been here 'off and on since '93' to live in 'nearly every suburb' - unless you've been moving every several months the entire time you've lived here.
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I also work hand in hand with a real estate and have a pretty good clue as to what the average buyer is going to spend in any given area of the Metro.
Then this 'real estate' you work hand in hand with obviously isn't qualified to speak with any authority on the Northeast side
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Lastly though, just as a brief and innocent little search, not even diving deep here... https://www.trulia.com/GA/Tucker/
I don't see much for under $200k there... no offense... but I really don't.
Tucker is just one segment of the Northeast side. And not everything out there is listed, either.
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Thank you.... for strengthening my point.
Sorry, but nothing has been strengthened except the fact that you haven't been paying attention.
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I love how in the previous comment you ask that I stick to what I know yet you also have no factual evidence to back this claim up, because after researching, it clearly shows that I'm quite close to my original claim.
Checking the index between Atlanta and Houston - while Houston does have higher numbers, the difference are margina at best...which is the point I made in my original post as well.
Anyone that has actually ever lived in the Coastal South knows there is a major difference. Enough said.
I'll give you that one... however, we have had several storms in the past that have caused pretty intensive flooding and washed away bridges (Five Forks Trkm, Peachtree Dunwoody (between Buckhead and Perimeter), ect - those bridges were washed out) and while Houston does get its fare share of bad weather / flooding - nothing on the scale of Irma has occured to Houston (or any American city besides New Orleans) within any known recorded historical period of time, thus which is why I call it a freak occurrence. Houston overall is more prone to Hurricane damage / flooding than Atlanta though. I won't deny that.
Those events of bridges being washed out in Atlanta were from an Historic 100 year storm, I assumed everyone knew that....
And it wasn't Irma that trashed Houston, it was Harvey.
As far as your tornado link goes, yes - we are eighth on a list of torando's happening within 75 miles of said City. That's a far cry from you erroneous claim that we are "right in the center of Tornado Alley." My link from the Feds proved it, and I stand by it.
It seems you are on some sort of mission here to dissuade the OP from moving, complete with bad advice, false information and a thinly veiled attempt to lessen our quality of life in comparison to Houston's.
1. I read about Atlanta being in Dixie Alley for tornados. Are there places in the area that are LESS prone to them? It sounds like having a basement in any case would be a huge advantage?
2. Houston housing is getting really expensive, especially for houses that made it through Harvey without even a drop of flooding. I couldn't afford to buy my own house today, or live anywhere even close to where I live now.
3. Specifically for ATLJan: I actually like that property. Alas, my wife is lukewarm on it.
4. I took state income tax into account, and asked for and received a raise to compensate for it, so I would't be taking a pay cut.
5. Buckhead felt a LOT like the Galleria area. Pretty much the same traffic too.
6. Based on the suggestions, we are seeing seeing stuff we like in the Marietta, Lithia Springs, and Douglasville areas. The Realtor.com crime heat map seems to suggest that the areas away from the city centers of Marietta and Douglasville are low in crime, and Lithia Springs seems to be low crime as well.
7. New question: Thoughts on Cartersville? There seems to be a lot of construction up that way, but I didn't find anything significant or recent when I searched this forum for that town. Is it too far out there to be a real contender?
Douglasville, Lithia Springs and even Marietta will all make for challenging commutes to and from the Perimeter Center area on most days, but Cartersville would be just downright brutal.
One would have to be a real sucker for commuting pain to seek out a Cartersville to Perimeter Center morning rush hour commute as well as a Perimeter Center to Cartersville afternoon/evening rush hour commute.
With a Cartersville to Perimeter Center morning rush hour commute, we are talking a morning rush hour commute that would be pushing 2.5 to 3 hours and/or more on the worst days on an I-75 Northwest and I-285 Top End Perimeter route that unfortunately can be prone to experiencing lots of really bad traffic days.
bu2 makes an excellent point in noting that the Atlanta area has very bad roads for suburb-to-suburb commutes, something which causes the Atlanta area to be much more heavily dependent on its relatively somewhat very sparse freeway and arterial road network because of the lack of alternate surface arterial routes that a metro area like Houston may have much more of.
bu2 also makes an excellent point in noting the massive reconstruction project that is ratcheting up in activity at the Top End I-285 Perimeter and Georgia 400 interchange in the Perimeter Center area... A major construction project that will only make the already-challenged rush hour commutes even more challenging on the Northside for the next 3 years or so.
An outlying area like Cartersville may have the kind of detached single-family home within the price range that you are looking for, but the rush hour commutes will be brutal on many days.
If you are willing to have as much as 6+ hours of your day be used for commuting, then Cartersville could be an option for you.
When you said that you are not too worried about the commute, I don't know if you necessarily had one-way commute times of 2.5 to 3+ hours in mind.
Douglasville and Lithia Springs will provide pretty tough rush hour commutes to and from the Perimeter Center as well with one-way rush hour commute times that will push over 2 hours on many days.
Of the areas that you named, Marietta would by far clearly provide the least-painful commutes to and from the Perimeter Center area, with one-way rush hour commutes that only push 1.5 hours on the worst days.
OK, everything is off my potential list except for Marietta. My wife found quite a few homes in Douglasville that she liked, but I don't like them 2-hours-each-way worth. A 1.5 hour commute is fine, especially if it doesn't happen every day.
I checked the NE and E as suggested, for both crime + prices, and inventory in my range looks thin in Tucker and Norcross, and nonexistent for Peachtree Corners and Duluth, but it looks like there are two "tendrils" of low-crime/affordability:
1. The Smoke Rise + Mountain Park "areas" (not sure what they are called locally) through Snellville and into Grayson
2. Northern Lawrenceville out to Auburn and Winder
Would it be fair to assume that the closer areas (say up to Snellville) are a reasonable (1.5 hours or less) commute into Perimeter Center? Realtor.com has commute times, but I have learned from y'all here that their estimates are EXTREMELY optimistic.
I wasn't able to find anything on this forum on Auburn, and very little on Winder, so I imagine they may suffer from the three-hour commute problem?
Yeah, see, you're really just going up into areas that aren't considered decent commutes to where you're going.
Just to throw another opinion out there...and you can take or leave this, just my two cents after having lived in this area for going on 22 years:
I wouldn't even CONSIDER buying ANYWHERE into the metro Atlanta area until I had at least $200k to spend, and probably $250k is much more realistic, though still on the low end for what you seek. The only exception would be if I were on my own and could get by in a 1-bedroom condo.
Is it possible to live in a low crime area that isn't a 1.5 hour commute each way? Yeah. But it will be a dump. Now, everybody's definition of dump is different. Looking at the houses posted in Doraville...there's absolutely no way I'd consider any of those. Some people would be fine in them. Some people may not ever consider where I think it's ok to live.
But the thing is...if you're talking about living in Winder or Auburn, you're talking about something that really nobody in metro Atlanta does, and the reason is because the commute is just too brutal.
BTW -- I'd be speaking out of school if I gave advice on Marietta. I know nothing about that area. But I do know this: Marietta is a HUGE area, and the term is used to describe all areas served by the Marietta post office. Many of those will not be in the city limits of Marietta. The best part of what is considered Marietta is what locals call East Cobb. You ain't getting into East Cobb for your range. Flat out guaranteed. I don't know what part of Marietta you would get into...but I do know that some relatively crummy parts of town fall under the Marietta moniker. So just watch out for that possibility.
If I were you.....I would look into renting an older townhome. Some of them are pretty big. You won't have the big yard, but many areas have a lot of trails, green space, parks and dog parks. You said your wife is disabled and can't work. Is her disability such that she can't take the dogs out to a park every day?
If I couldn't do that, I'd probably stay in Houston.
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