Best family friendly Atlanta suburb? (Roswell, Marietta: sales, houses, neighborhoods)

[MarylandCB05]

Hello,
I'm new to the forum and really appreciate how detailed some of the responses are. After paging through dozens of posts, I thought it best to post my own. My situation is as follows:
We are considering a move from Baltimore, md to Atlanta. My husband has been offered a position in sales that involves primarily commuting to universities, research labs and biotech firms in the metro area as well as Birmingham. He'd be in a home office but traveling quite a bit. I've heard horror stories about traffic in Atl. (though currently its the capital beltway... Can't imagine it could get much worse).
We have a young family (4, 2 and on the way), so suburbia, safety and good schools are definitely high on our priority list. I'm also interested in considering a good Catholic school.
Our housing budget would put us in the mid 200s, which seems to be a manageable amount in most suburbs, but we'd Prefer a house with some character as opposed to cookie cutter neighborhoods where leaning out your bedroom window has you high fiving the neighbors.
Thanks in advance for the help!

[ASB84]

Traffic in Atlanta shouldn't be any worse than the area you are coming from...probably a little better in fact. From my experience, a lot of the people that complain so much about traffic in Atlanta are coming from smaller towns and cities in the South, so it is obviously going to be really bad compared to what they are used to. If your husband is going to have to be driving to Birmingham quite a bit, you might want to look at areas on the west side of 285. For your price range, you could get a pretty nice house in Smyrna or Mableton. However, avoiding "cookie cutter" neighborhoods may be somewhat of a challenge in these areas. Do you know what part of metro Atlanta your husband will be doing the majority of his work in? I don't really know anything about Catholic schools in the area so I can't help you there.

[anitah1]

Roswell. Small town feel, VERY family friendly with a multitude of possibilties for kids. We also sent our son to Catholic School in Roswell. Queen of Angels. Excellent. Very traditional.

If traffic is an issue, DO NOT move to the area near Johns Creek, Suwanee or Duluth. Nightmare!

[anitah1]

Call on me any time. Good luck and I assure you you will love it here!

[ATL4U]

Cumming, Alpharetta - South Forsyth and North Fulton Counties.

Windermere
The Manor
Vickery
Creekstone Estates

Just a few examples. There's something for everyone here.

Good luck.

[cwkimbro]

You might want to map out what his common commutes will most likely be... consider how often he goes on each route, but also when (time of day) he would need to use each route. If he needs to leave pre-rush hour to go to Birmingham anyways being on the west side of town might not be as important, but it could be if he does that really frequently. If you go towards Emory/CDC alot more, then I would look locally/north/central dekalb or further east in Gwinnett along US78 given your housing budget.

Atlanta's "favored quarter" that attracts most of the growth is North, Northeast, and Northwest.

People will be able to point you towards nice, specific areas within your budget in different parts of town. I would try to figure what part of town ya'll think where would be best for your most frequent commutes and you can get better advice from people.

Catholic school... St Pius comes to mind in north Dekalb County... It is the big one in the area (also consider the fact that this city isn't very catholic compared to cities further north).... in fact I think you will find more catholic schools in Dekalb Co to the northeast than anywhere, but I think there are few others scattered around.

I would also ignore ATL4Us links... those are really out your price range and really far north.

[ATL_II_DMV]

If commute to Birmingham is a factor, you may want to look into Douglas County as well. Douglas Co is off of 20 West and a straight shot to B Ham.

I don't see the attraction or draw of North Fulton County beside Roswell or unless you have enough money to move to Buckhead.

Too much traffic/congestion in North Fulton IMO

[Iconographer]

I find the city of Decatur to be very family friendly, walkable and loaded with character. The local Catholic school is St Thomas More.
St. Thomas More Catholic School, Decatur, GA

[ATL_II_DMV]

lol @ Decatur

North Dekalb County is decent (Tucker, Chamblee, etc), but most of Decatur is not familty friendly at all.

Thereare a few historical neighborhoods in the Dec that are nice though

[jbrads11]

This is very helpful information, as my family of 4 (5 in the fall) will be heading to the area in the next 6 months. We're looking at the Northern cities of Atlanta, don't want to get any farther North than Woodstock.....and looking from Marietta (West) to Duluth (East). Is there a significant tax and house value from Fulton to Forsyth or to the other close counties? Our top 3 right now are Roswell, Alpharetta and Marietta....but we're definitely open to suggestions.

Our priorities are schools, family friendly, activity-rich area, nice newer houses for the $$......thanks again for the help!