by Parker

WANT TO LIVE IN DECATUR GEORGIA? THE INSIDE SCOOP ON LIVING IN DECATUR GEORGIA

 

 

Hey, this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta Realtor. We’ve done several videos on the City of Decatur, which is just east of downtown Atlanta. The City of Decatur is a very popular spot for people, especially if they’re going to be working at Emory or the CDC. So I wanted to give you 5 interesting facts about the City of Decatur. Let’s get going.

Number one:  there are five different zip codes that give you a Decatur mailing address, but only one of those zip codes is actually the City of Decatur. Do you know which one is actually the City of Decatur? We’ll insert the jeopardy theme music here for you, but it’s actually 300300. This is really useful information to know if you’re searching for a home in the City of Decatur. If you pull up listings on Realtor.com for instance, and you see that the zip code is 30030, you know you’re looking at a house within the city limits of Decatur. Any other zip codes with a Decatur mailing address, and what you’re looking at is a home an unincorporated Dekalb County. If you don’t know what unincorporated means, it means it’s part of a county but not part of a city. This is important information because the City of Decatur has its own police department, fire department, and school system. But also has much higher property values and higher property taxes as well. You know the school system and the police department may be a plus or a minus for you depending on your specific needs, and your budget, so having this information will definitely help you with your home search. So again the City of Decatur is zip code 30030, and every other home with the Decatur mailing address is part of Dekalb County.

Number two:  the City Schools of Decatur are one of the biggest drivers of demand for housing inside the city limits. City Schools of Decatur are some of the best in the entire state, and many parents are willing to pay that higher premium in the property taxes in order to be in that school system. City Schools of Decatur has five elementary schools, two upper elementary schools, which are fourth and fifth grade only only, one middle school, and one high school, which is conveniently located right next to downtown Decatur square. Almost all of the elementary schools are walk to school with a great community feel. One other unique thing about the City Schools of Decatur is the College Heights early childhood learning center, which goes from six weeks all the way up to pre-k, so it’s sort of like a public preschool. There are several other churches in Decatur which offer preschool programs as well.

Number three:  the City of Decatur has a very young and very highly educated population. There’s about 26,000 people in the City of Decatur, The median age is 37 which means half the people are below 37 and half are older than 37 and 75 percent of those people have a bachelor’s degree or higher. So as you might guess, the City of Decatur has a very high median household income. It’s actually just above $106,000 a year.

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Number four:  the City of Decatur has a great public park system. There’s almost 60 acres of public parks in the City of Decatur, which is actually quite a lot considering that the total area of the city is only four and a half square miles. Many of the neighborhoods in nearby North Decatur and Druid Hills have their own swim and tennis clubs, which are very popular and sometimes there’s a long waiting list, so they can be difficult to get into. City of Decatur has their own public pools:  they have three pools. They have three separate tennis complexes and they have three dog parks.

And finally, number five:  if you’re moving to Atlanta and planning on using public transportation, City of Decatur is a great place to be located. There’s the East Lake MARTA station, the Avondale MARTA station, and the downtown Decatur MARTA station, which is conveniently located on Decatur Square. The good news is all of these MARTA stations are surrounded by the neighborhoods – they’re an easy walk. So if you’re planning on using public transportation in Atlanta, Decatur is a fine place to be.

So I hope you found that helpful. Again we have several other videos about Decatur, the most popular and comprehensive of which is our pros and cons of living in Decatur, which I’ll link right there. And if you’re planning a move to Atlanta, please feel free to reach out my information is in the box below:  give me a call, shoot me a text, send me an emai,l I’d love to talk to you thanks!

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 by Parker

IS ATLANTA A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE? LIVING IN ATLANTA PROS AND CONS

 

So is Atlanta a good place to live? Well I think so! We’re going to talk about the pros and cons of living in Atlanta.

Number one- Atlantans are friendly! You may feel a little awkward the first time a complete stranger smiles at you and waves at you, but that’s how it is here. It’s a very friendly environment, and people are genuinely curious about who you are and where you’re from and your life story.

Your neighbors will invite you over for dinner. It may seem a little strange at first how friendly people are, but you’ll get used to it pretty quick.

Pro number two: Atlanta’s cost of living. Atlanta has a much lower cost of living than many other metropolitan areas around the United States. If you go to Nerd Wallet’s cost of living calculator, you can put in your current city and income and see how it compares with Atlanta. In this case I’m checking out Los Angeles, and you can see that Atlanta is 30 percent less expensive and housing in particular is 56 percent less expensive in Atlanta.

Nerd Wallet’s cost of living calculator is a great tool if you’re interested in comparing your current situation with what life would be like if you move to Atlanta.

Pro number three:  travel.  Atlanta is a great place to live if you love to travel! Most Atlantans probably take it for granted, but we’re spoiled by having one of the busiest airports in the United States and you can get to almost any place in the world non-stop from Atlanta’s international airport. Add to that you’re less than two hours from the lovely Blue Ridge mountains in North Georgia, or you can hop in the car and head down to the Atlantic Ocean, and you’ll be on the beach in less than five hours!

Pro number four:  job opportunities. If you’re looking for great job opportunities, Atlanta is the home to many fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot and UPS.  Atlanta has also become a center for high-tech investment from companies like Microsoft and Google. Georgia Tech has a small business incubator which has done a tremendous job bringing high-tech industries to Atlanta.

You may not realize this, but so many films and television shows are produced in Georgia that is now called the Hollywood of the South. Every week when I’m driving around town, I see film production sets film and tv production.

In Atlanta healthcare is also big business. In fact, four of our top ten employers in Atlanta are in the healthcare sector. Right now all of these hospitals are aggressively recruiting doctors and nurses and they’re paying big signing bonuses. So, if you’re looking for great job opportunities Atlanta is the place to be.

Pro number five:  the weather! The weather here is really enjoyable – for most of the year it gets a hot in July and August, and gets a little cold in January. But for most of the year, the weather’s pretty fantastic. It’s very easy to get outside and do outdoor activities pretty much year round.

Pro number six:  there’s lots of things to do in Atlanta.  As I said the great weather makes it very easy to get outside and enjoy yourself whether you like hiking, biking, tennis, golf.  You can do those activities pretty much year round. The Chattahoochee River is a great recreational resource. We love to go tubing there every summer, and one of our other favorite things to do is to visit what we call dog island, where all the dog owners bring their pups to splash around and play in the river.

If you’re a gardening aficionado, you’re going to love the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.  They have an indoor rain forest, an orchid house, they have a chef’s kitchen, an edible garden and a children’s garden. They have sculptures made out of plants –  it’s really a wonderful place. If you’re into gardening and you’re into plants you’ve got to go to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.

If you’d like to stay busy, whether you like professional sports leagues, sports, the opera, art museums, art festivals, the symphony, swimming, fishing, music and small clubs or large arenas, Atlanta is filled with great cultural activities. Add to that thousands of restaurants serving every kind of cuisine imaginable and I promise you you will not be hungry or bored living in Atlanta.

And finally pro number seven:  the green space. One thing you’ll notice when you see images of Georgia is that there are trees everywhere. Atlanta is a big city in an enormous forest and the city hasn’t scared off the wildlife. My backyard is like a nature special on PBS there’s bunny rabbits and foxes possums and dozens of birds including hawks and falcons – which is why we have the Atlanta hawks and the Atlanta falcons. The trees give us some great colors in the fall.

So now let’s talk about our cons. Fortunately there aren’t many cons to living in Atlanta, but I’m going to go ahead and give them to you here.

Con number one the traffic. Atlanta is notorious for having some of the worst traffic in the United States. I always tell people if you’re moving to Atlanta you really need to get a home close to where you work. I will say one thing that has improved traffic in Atlanta is the new work from home paradigm it’s really taken a good chunk of cars off the road and I think it’s made a big improvement and hopefully it will continue. But again if you’re moving to Atlanta the number one thing you can do to improve your quality of life is to live reasonably close to where you work.

Con number two: lack of mass transit. This goes hand in hand with Atlanta’s traffic problems. Atlanta’s mass transit system is called MARTA and to be honest it kind of sucks. Unfortunately MARTA wasn’t very well designed to begin with-  it uses a very large rail which requires excessively large stations unlike the lighter platforms that you see in Chicago and New York City. It also doesn’t cover much area, in fact many of the stations on the north side you actually have to drive to get to the station, which kind of defeats the point of mass transit. Atlanta is very spread out geographically and MARTA just doesn’t cover much area. So if you’re planning on making a move to Atlanta and you’re thinking you want to use mass transit, you really need to do your homework and make sure it’s going to be a viable solution for you.

Con number three:  the rain. As nice as the weather is most of the year, sometimes it can start raining and you honestly wonder if it’s ever going to stop. Atlanta actually gets much more rain than even a notoriously rainy city like Seattle. Seattle for instance averages 38 inches of rain every year Atlanta actually averages 50 inches of rain. The difference is in Seattle, it’s rainy and drizzly all the time. In Atlanta the thunderstorms pop up and you get these incredible downpours. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve been on the highway and had to pull off because I just simply couldn’t see 10 feet in front of my car because of all the rain.

I hope this gives you a little bit more insight what it’s like to live in Atlanta. It’s a lovely town – friendly people, great cultural activities, so much to do, wonderful weather. It’s just a terrific all-around place to live.

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 by Parker

ATLANTA GEORGIA REAL ESTATE – SEPTEMBER 2021 ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS

https://youtu.be/s2aI5YeFqS8

 

Hey, this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta REALTOR. It has been a very busy few weeks for me in Atlanta, and we are definitely overdue for a new video! So, I wanted to share some quick on the ground updates about what’s going on in the Atlanta market right now. Let’s get going!

The last few weeks, I’ve had a bunch of buyers in town, and I have been all over Atlanta looking at houses. Everywhere from Midtown all the way up to Milton, Roswell, Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, and Lawrenceville. I’ve been everywhere – I can tell you right now, there are so many houses on the market in Atlanta, that have been waiting for a buyer. These are houses that have been on the market three, four, five weeks, and they’re just waiting for a good buyer. These are houses that last spring would have sold in one weekend with multiple offers. Now they’re on the market for a month, generating one offer!

So things have softened up considerably here. I’m definitely not going to say that it’s a buyer’s market by any stretch of the imagination, but it feels very balanced right now, and things are operating at a much more normal pace. So, for example, I was out with clients last week –  we were looking in town, looking at city of Decatur, and we looked at five houses, and actually came away with three really good choices that were priced very reasonably – three excellent options out of five houses that we looked at. It’s very surprising, I mean it’s probably been 17 or 18 months since I’ve seen that kind of availability, and I’m seeing this trend everywhere. It’s not just in town, like I said, Sandy Springs, Roswell, Alpharetta, Lawrenceville – it’s everywhere!

So, if you got totally spooked by all the panic buying last spring, I can assure you that is over. It’s a much more normal market now. It’s brisk, it’s very busy, but it’s not out of control – like roller coaster careening down the tracks wheels about to fall off kind of insanity, which is what it was like in the spring.

So if you’re thinking of making the move to Atlanta, now is an excellent time to be looking. I always encourage people to look in the fall – it’s an excellent time to go out and pick up some bargains. If you’re in the market, as always my phone number is down below. Feel free to give me a call, and we’ll have some more video content out later this week – thanks!

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 by Parker

BUYING A HOUSE IN ATLANTA? ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SUMMER 2021

BUYING A HOUSE IN ATLANTA? ATLANTA HOUSING MARKET 2021 – ATLANTA REAL ESTATE NEWS SUMMER 2021

 

Hey, this is Parker, your favorite Atlanta REALTOR, and I’m back with a quick update on the Atlanta housing market for August 2021. Let’s get going! Things are really starting to settle down here – there’s more inventory coming on to the market, and I expect to see more as we get into the fall, and people settle into their normal routines. I’ve got a couple of listings coming up – things are looking pretty good!

Buyer demand has also dropped in the last two months. It’s fairly normal for demand to fall in Atlanta during the summer, but what I think more importantly has happened, is that all of that excess demand – sort of the panic buying caused by Covid – has just kind of fizzled out. Houses are staying on the market longer, with fewer multiple offer situations, and a lot of the houses my team members have sold recently have just gotten one single offer. One good offer is all you need!

I’m also detecting some buyer pushback after the big run up in prices. You know, buyers have access to all of the pricing information, and if they go onto a listing, and they see that – okay, the owner just bought this house in 2019, and now it’s on the market for $250,000 more than they paid for it less than two years ago, it kind of leaves a bad taste in their mouth, and frankly, if buyers look at a house, and it the pricing just looks opportunistic, kind of like make me move type pricing, they just won’t even bother to look at it.

I’m also detecting a very slight downward price correction. We’ll obviously have to wait a couple of months to see what the true numbers are, but it feels like that’s what’s happening. If you’re in the under $300,000 first time home buyer bracket, you’re really still facing some challenges in the Atlanta market, especially if you want to live in town or somewhere inside the perimeter. But, it’s not nearly as desperate as it was just four months ago. Once you get into the $500,000 plus bracket, things are a lot more normal. Houses are sitting on the market, fewer multiple offer situations. Sometimes as I said – just a single offer to sell the house. It’s a much more normal market pace, and frankly, it’s a lot more pleasurable to work like this!

So, what does this all mean if you’re a buyer? To sum it all up:  it means you have more choices and there’s less pressure to make a snap decision on a house. It’s not like you’re walking into a house thinking oh there’s 20 other people that are trying to get this house how am i going to get it? It’s a much calmer pace in the market and frankly it works better for all parties concerned, especially if you’re a buyer. So again, if you’re interested in moving to Atlanta, please look in the box down below get my phone number send me an email I’d love to talk to you thanks!

in News / Uncategorized
 by Parker

ATLANTA CLIMATE – DOES IT SNOW IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA?

Hey – it’s Parker your favorite Atlanta Realtor! I’m here to answer the question:  does Georgia have four seasons? Is hot Atlanta really hot all year long? Well i’m about to give you a taste of what the weather is like in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

Let’s get going! Atlanta, unlike Chicago, for example, doesn’t have a strict four seasons. We have a lot of unseasonably warm days in the winter, and we have a lot of very nice cool days in the summer. I like to say that we have endless spring, a very short summer, then endless fall and a very short winter.  And then it’s back to endless spring!

Winter most years – there’s not much of a winter in Atlanta.  It may start to get cold mid-December, or it may not.  January is usually our coldest month, and honestly, by February, you usually start to see daffodils poking out of the ground. Most winters in Atlanta don’t even require a heavy coat! Most years you can get by with just sweaters or a light jacket or a puffy vest. I mean it just really doesn’t get that cold in Atlanta.

Again, we don’t get snow every year and most years if we get snow it’s just a very light dusting, but every five years or so, we get a major snowstorm that comes into Atlanta.

The most recent time this happened was back in 2014 in the humiliating episode known as Snowpocalypse. Let me tell you about Snowpocalypse:  late in January 2014 we had some sub-freezing weather and it began to snow heavily. This is rare in Atlanta, it actually started to stick very heavily especially on the roads. It was the middle of the day, and the schools decided to send the kids home early, then all the businesses told their employees to head home, and within hours we had a classic Atlanta highway traffic jam in the middle of a 20-year snowstorm!!!

There were over 800 traffic accidents! People were stranded in their cars, or at work. People ended up sleeping on their desks and on the floors in grocery stores, and because of this debacle, lots of people made fun of Atlanta – even Saturday night live took a few digs at us!

We also get these incredible ice storms where we get freezing rain that sticks to all of the power lines and the tree branches, and it can knock the power out for days on end. So anytime snow or ice is predicted, everyone freaks out and buys up all the milk and bread and all the beer. But again, most winters don’t see anything more than a light dusting of snow. It’s just not that cold here!

The good news is spring is always right around the corner in Atlanta, and when it arrives it seems to last forever. In mid-January, the camellias start to bloom, and over the next four or five months, it’s just this endless unfolding of beautiful flowers and plants and all of our wonderful trees. It’s a gorgeous time to be in Atlanta.

The only thing wrong with spring in Atlanta is the pollen! If you have pollen allergies, Atlanta can be a rough ride! During spring pollen season, we have days where the trees are just pumping out so much pollen it blows around in huge yellow clouds. But other than the pollen, spring in Atlanta is de lovely.

If you like what we’re doing here, please like, comment and subscribe – preferably all three! Let’s get back to it! Unfortunately, spring always comes to an end, and then it’s summer! And it’s hot most summer days! It can be in the high 80s to low 90s, and it can very occasionally get up into the 100s! Add to that 65-70% humidity, and it gets sticky real fast!!!

Now, all this heat and humidity ends up driving these incredible summer afternoon thunder showers. If you come from an arid climate where it just doesn’t rain much, you may never have seen rain like it rains in Georgia! These thunderstorms usually blow out pretty quickly and they can actually turn a 90 plus degree day into a very very cool evening. The rain just pours down out of the sky and just washes away the heat. You’ve heard the old saying it’s not the heat it’s the humidity? Well, what we experience as heat most of the time in Atlanta is actually just excess humidity. Yesterday was August 8th, I was out with my dog in the middle of the day, and the weather was perfect! I checked the humidity and it was only 53 percent. Two hours later, I was getting ready to play tennis, and it was a total sweat box – very muggy, and I checked again, and the temperature had actually dropped a couple of degrees, but the humidity had gone up to 57%! I honestly had no idea that such a small increase in the humidity could have such a dramatic effect, and the crazy thing was it happened in two hours! It went from being very pleasant and very dry feeling, to all the sudden, very very muggy! And it was only a four percent increase in the humidity!!! I always say that Atlanta is hot but it’s not Florida hot! If you’ve ever been to Florida, you know how suffocating it can get with the heat and the humidity down there! So, by comparison, Atlanta’s just not that hot!

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