Unaffordable City of Decatur vs Questionable DeKalb (Atlanta, Druid Hills: appointed, real estate)

[Sigh..inDecatur]

I'm in an odd spot. My husband and I bought a foreclosure - a 2 bedroom townhome in City of Decatur for $90k. Our neighbors' homes are now selling for $220k. Great, right? Problem - we'd like a house but we will never be able to afford one in City of Decatur. Everything $350 and under is being torn down for new $800k home. We have a child and we'd like to maybe have another- tight squeeze in our current home. We like homes in unincorporated DeKalb, particularly Medlock Park, but the schools and cityhood, etc. are in flux. What should we do?

Would you suck it up and stay in the townhome so your kids can go to City of Decatur schools?

Would you take a gamble on DeKalb and hope that the Druid Hills charter, City of Briarcliff, or something similar happens?

I'd love to hear from people in the Druid Hills cluster - how do you feel about your neighborhood's prospects? I'd like to believe that residents will successfully push for improvements. But, I know DeKalb County is an old, cranky, corrupt behemoth.

[red92s]

Welcome to the club. I am similarly disappointed in my prospects of ever being able to reside in CoD with a family. I grew up there, and would have loved to raise a family there even 10 or 15 years ago when the schools were "bad", houses were only 1,600 square feet, and there wasn't artisanal cocktails being sold on every street corner. My wife and I are both college-educated, working professionals, with incomes that land us in the 28% federal tax bracket . . . and purchasing in Decatur has gone from "just out or reach" in 2012 to "Ha! Dream on!" in 2014. Wish we had been ready to tackle home ownership in early 2012, as we'd have an extra $100k in equity and not have to worry about the train-wreck that is APS. Hindsight, I suppose . . .

[deacongirl]

I would suck it up and stay in townhome. Good luck.

[jsvh]

A third option: City of Atlanta. Cheaper than Decatur (and even uni-DeKalb taxes) and has improving schools.

But between those two, I'd probably stay in Decatur.

[arjay57]

What about all those areas like Medlock, McLendon, Oak Grove, etc.? I thought they were pretty nice.

[Sigh..inDecatur]

Thanks for the replies. I hope this thread is also helpful for others. Townhomes and others condos are the last options under $250k in City of Decatur. I imagine there are others debating that choice. On the positive side, so far our kid loves it. We do have lots of greenspace without any yardwork. And the number of families with kids moving into the townhomes around us is increasing quickly.

[lastminutemom]

Originally Posted by Sigh..inDecatur

I'm in an odd spot. My husband and I bought a foreclosure - a 2 bedroom townhome in City of Decatur for $90k. Our neighbors' homes are now selling for $220k. Great, right? Problem - we'd like a house but we will never be able to afford one in City of Decatur. Everything $350 and under is being torn down for new $800k home. We have a child and we'd like to maybe have another- tight squeeze in our current home. We like homes in unincorporated DeKalb, particularly Medlock Park, but the schools and cityhood, etc. are in flux. What should we do?

Would you suck it up and stay in the townhome so your kids can go to City of Decatur schools?

Would you take a gamble on DeKalb and hope that the Druid Hills charter, City of Briarcliff, or something similar happens?

I'd love to hear from people in the Druid Hills cluster - how do you feel about your neighborhood's prospects? I'd like to believe that residents will successfully push for improvements. But, I know DeKalb County is an old, cranky, corrupt behemoth.

This Board election may tell us something about the Charter cluster effort. This is a slim possibility (which is better than no possibility) that a majority of the newly elected board members may support a charter cluster. The final results (after the runoffs) will be known by the end of July.

The Cityhood efforts have interesting implications because I keep hearing that there is some possibility that the Druid Hills area that is not in City of Atlanta will work to get annexed into Atlanta. This will have implications for the parts of the Druid Hills high school cluster that won't be annexed.

No crystal ball though. Sorry.

[Dkeating]

If you like the area you're in--stuff to walk to, kids for your kids to play with--I would stay put. 90K for a COD home is a great deal. Like red92s said, it's crazy how much the prices have gone up since 2011-2012. I remember a few houses in Oakhurst that, although they needed some work and were 2 bedrooms, were selling from $100-160K. Now they would be bought to be demolished for 250K or more. I understand the need for more space, but would comfort myself with the smaller mortgage payment, and maybe with the thought that Oakhurstians of a generation ago raised larger families in tiny 2/1 houses. If you have the same gender kids, bunk beds would work until college

That's not to say I don't think the schools in Medlock Park aren't fine as well. I think too much emphasis is put on the average test scores for the schools-- which is highly correlated in most cases with the degree of poverty in the student population--in determining what kind of education any individual student will "get" from a school. Isn't Laurel Ridge the elementary school for Medlock Park? It seems to have pretty good test scores now.

I also think APS schools like Toomer and BPA will see marked test score improvement in the near future, because the affluence of the students attending the school will increase. I lthink the primary reason the Decatur schools are "good" is that there's such a high cost of entry, not primarily because of the pedagogical approach.

[LovelySummer]

Here's what I'd do. Get your townhome appraised to see how much you could sell it for. If you can clear a 200K PROFIT from your townhome, I would look into selling it by owner, not pay a cent in real estate commission in order to try to amass as much cash as possible for the next move. Then, before I sold or listed anything, I'd go to the developers in CoD and see what type of deal they will cut you on price if you have 200K in cash. For example, I purchased a 2 year old MB E-class a few years ago, fully loaded with the sports package, for 32K bc I had the whole 32K in cash right then when I walked into the showroom. A person that flips homes or a developer might cut you a deal on pricing if you have that much cash. Sellers of products do it all the time, they just don't like advertising it bc they don't want everyone to start asking for a deal.

If this doesn't get you down to a low enough price point in CoD, I'll try the same type of negotiation in city of Atlanta. You can get awesome homes in Poncey-Highlands, Druid Hills (not the part outside of incorporated fulton county, the part t that is inside city limits), Inman Park, Candler Park, Morningside. Politically, all of those places are fairly similar in feel to CoD and the homes are beautiful, and much less than CoD. Also, I suggested these areas bc they have a good set of schools (e.g., Morningside elementary, Springdale Park, Inman Middle, Grady, etc.).

If all else fails, you can always stay in your current place and you are in no worse position than if you never tried.

I also love how you paid 90K for a foreclosure and the others are selling at 200K. I tried to tell a poster on C-D (who shall remain nameless) about foreclosures and he argued me down about it so I let him have it, since he was obviously so knowledgeable that it was not possible to get a foreclosure that was not a complete wreck. I'm a foreclosure purchaser as well...numerous times.

Hey there is an idea, are there any foreclosures in CoD that might not be listed as yet that an agent could help you learn about and get in on right away?

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by deacongirl

I would suck it up and stay in townhome. Good luck.

I second this.

It's just me and only one child but I lived in a small and bit of a dump apartment in Virginia-Highland with my daughter (because nothing else was affordable) so I could send my child to Mary Lin and Inman Middle School. I used work in downtown Decatur. I wanted to live there and send my daughter to City of Decatur schools but I couldn't afford the rent in the area.

Moving into that school district and living in that small, not-so-great apartment was the best thing I ever could have done for my child.

I guess my perspective is different because I lived many years in Atlanta and I've never owned a home there, as the areas with good schools were beyond cost-prohibitive for me as a single parent. As an adult I've always lived in apartment and I've learned to accept having less space, particularly for the sake of affordability--even more so when you have school-age children but can't afford homes beyond a certain price point to live in a good school district.

I think as Americans, especially these days, we are convinced that we are successful or we have to show others our success through home ownership or the size of the houses we buy. We feel like we just HAVE to have a lot of space. Often the issue isn't that we need more space, we just have too much stuff that we think we need that we really don't need.

Your child's education is the priority. It's not worth the gamble to move into an area with bad schools (which also translates into areas with crime) so you can have more space.

Stay where you are. You don't want to have any regrets when it comes to your child(ren)'s education and safety.