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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 by Parker

BEST STATE TO RETIRE 2021???? WHAT IS ONE OF THE BEST STATES TO RETIRE TAX WISE? MOVING TO GEORGIA.

Hey, this is Parker your favorite Atlanta realtor! If you’ve considered moving to Georgia to retire, well there’s great news! Bankrate.com has just chosen Georgia as its best state to retire to in the year 2021. So, why is Georgia such a great place to retire? Give me three minutes and I’ll tell you why!

For starters, homes are still very affordable in Georgia, and in terms of cost of living, Georgia actually has the sixth lowest cost of living of any state. Georgia’s cost of living index, which covers groceries, housing, utilities, transportation and health care is 89.2. For comparison, California has the highest cost of living index in the continental U.S. at 151.

Georgia also has a very low personal income tax rate, although it’s not quite as low as our neighbors to the north in Tennessee and to the south in Florida. If you’re over 62, Georgia also exempts social security income and pension payments from income tax, so that lightens the tax burden even more. Many of our counties exempt people over 65 from the educational portion of their property tax bill, which is obviously the largest chunk of your property taxes. So, you’re getting a very nice discount not only on your income taxes, but also on your property taxes.

One of my favorite things about the state of Georgia, and something that will surely appeal to any retiree is the incredibly broad range of geography we have in the state. In North Georgia, we have the cool beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, with hundreds of waterfalls and endless hiking trails, and in the southeast part of the state, we have Savannah, Georgia – one of the crown jewels of American cities, and some of the loveliest coastlines anywhere along the Atlantic coast.

if you’d like to find out more about the North Georgia mountains and the Georgia coast check out my video here. If you love lake life, Georgia is a great place to be, and we currently have over 7,000 miles of lakefront shoreline. So, if you’ve dreamed of retiring and living on the lake, Georgia is where you want to be!

Now, while our biggest cities Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah have steadily gotten more expensive over the last 10 years, they’re still very affordable relative to most major metropolitan areas around the country. If you’re interested in a small farm or a parcel of land, you can find these you know 45 minutes to an hour from all of our biggest cities and pick it up for peanuts.

So, you can buy a home, you can buy a farm, you can buy some acreage and stay very close to your kids, stay close to your grandkids. In fact, many of the people i’ve worked with over the past couple of years have been what we call trailing grandparents. There are people who are moving to Georgia to stay close to their kids and their grandkids. So it’s a very nice trend to see, and i’m sure if that’s what’s on your mind you’re gonna love it! So, if you’re thinking about making the move to the state of Georgia to be close to the kids or the grandkids or maybe to get away from the kids and the grandkids, feel free to reach out to me give me a call i’d love to talk to you thanks!

 

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 by Parker

Moving to Atlanta? Living in Atlanta Ga – 5 things I hate about Atlanta.

Hey everyone it’s Parker your favorite Atlanta realtor, and today i’m going to tell you the five things I hate about Atlanta. Welcome to my channel, which is where I share information about moving to Atlanta, about having fun in Atlanta, and insider information about how things really work in Atlanta.

Let’s get going the number one thing I hate about Atlanta is the pollen. Atlanta is the city of trees and every spring those trees make unbelievable amounts of pollen. If you have pollen allergies, you may want to think twice before moving to Atlanta. At the peak of spring pollen season, you can watch the pine trees and literally see clouds of pollen blowing out. It covers your car in a thick layer – if you have a black car, you might as well go ahead and sell it and get something silver or gold, because all it does is show off the pollen. Even for those of us who don’t have allergies if you get a few days without rain to wash the pollen down you can really start to feel the symptoms of hay fever. Pollen season is a big old mess in Atlanta.

Another downside of all these trees is the sap that comes out of the oaks in the spring – you’ll get in your car and you’ll see on your windshield like there’s this fine mist and then you turn on your windshield wipers to try to clean it all off and it’s like maple syrup just being smeared across your windshield. It’s bad! And, the oak trees make tremendous amounts of these little seed tassels in the spring and in the fall. I mean there’s just billions of pounds of leaves and all of that ends up on your roof. If you don’t clean that off, it’ll rot your roof it’ll get down in your gutters, it’ll clog your gutters, rot out your soffits – it does create a significant amount of home maintenance.

Now those gripes being set aside, I actually love all the trees in Atlanta. I could never live out west and if you’re coming from New Mexico or Texas or one of these arid climates where they don’t have any trees, it’s actually astonishing when you get to Atlanta and you see it’s a forest. It’s a gigantic forest!

Number two of the things I hate about Atlanta: ice storms!!! Atlanta has these incredible ice storms where freezing rain falls from the skies for hours on end, it piles up on the power lines, on the tree branches, all of that gets dragged down and your power’s out for the next three days! Back in 2014, Atlanta experienced what has come to be known as Snowpocalypse. Some people call it Snowmageddon, but i really prefer Snowpocalypse.

Now this will all seem quite amusing if you’re from the north, but here’s the nutshell version of what happened in Snowpocalypse. Late in January 2014, we had several days of sub-freezing weather, and on a Friday, it started to snow very heavily and started to stick to the roads, which is very, very rare in Atlanta. It was the middle of the day, and the schools all said, hey let’s send the kids home, and so everybody that’s at work who had kids had to head home to get their kids, and the bosses said, hey it looks like it’s starting to stick, why don’t we just send everybody home? So you had a classic Atlanta traffic jam combined with a ton of snow!!!  There were 800 traffic accidents that day people – ended up sleeping in their cars, people ended up sleeping at work, people ended up abandoning their cars on the side of the highway and just getting out and trying to walk home. It was a total mess, and then what happened is over the next several days it was still right around freezing, it got just enough above freezing that the snow melted a little bit and then overnight it froze super hard again and two days later this entire town was glazed with ice. It was five days before you could go anywhere on the roads, so it’s not so much that Atlanta gets snow and gets ice like every other state, it’s that it happens so infrequently that we’re just really not prepared to handle it.

We saw what happened in Texas just last week –  they had a major storm move in, everybody lost power, they’re freezing in their homes. Similar things have happened in Atlanta, so be prepared.

Number three – we have roaches!!! Not just any kind of roach, we have palmetto bugs – these giant freaking roaches – you’ll see them in your house and they’ll suddenly take flight and land on you and terrorize you. A few years ago I was having a dream that I had a roach on my face and I slapped my face in the middle of the night, and I said, oh that was funny I was dreaming I had a roach on my face, and I slapped myself. Well, I look in the bed next to me and there’s a dead roach!!! There was a roach on my face, and that’s what these roaches do, they’ll get on you, they’re not afraid of you.

Mosquitoes – okay, combined with the roaches, we have mosquitoes. Atlanta’s great I’d say 10 months out of the year, July and August roll around, forget it – tons of mosquitoes.

Black widows – now if they all look like ScarJo I wouldn’t mind, but these are real black widows. A couple of years ago my son’s teacher was reaching into her mailbox to get her mail out, and she got bit by a black widow in her own mailbox!!!! Another time my son had an old Bob the Builder hat that he loved to wear and it sat out in the yard for a few days, and he went out there and picked it up, and he was about to put it on his head, and he looked down, and there’s a giant black widow that had built a nest inside of his hat!!!  You’ve got to keep your eyes open!

We also have brown recluses or at least i think we have brown recluses. Honestly if I see a spider anywhere, I just kind of step on it and squish it.

Number four of the things I hate about Atlanta:  the wild animals!!! We have copperheads that have been making an appearance over the last several years. Snake bites have gone way up! We’ve been seeing a lot of these copperheads on the trails where we like to hike and bike and walk, and just last summer we went down to the new Peachtree Creek park, and my son wanted to go down and splash around in the water. Well my oldest son says Dad, there’s a snake there, and I look down and there’s a copperhead that’s as big around as a baseball bat!!!!  Just a huge snake sitting right there waiting to bite somebody!

Atlanta also has an increasing population of coyotes. Normally you don’t see them during the day, although the last few years it’s becoming more and more common. They do come out at night, and I gotta warn you if you have cats, you want to keep them indoors after dark. That’s not an exaggeration – this is for real!!! Coyotes love to go after cats, so keep them indoors.

And number five of the things I hate about Atlanta!!! I should have actually made this number one, I should have done these in reverse order, but number five –  we’ll say five is the greatest, the most hated thing in Atlanta. You probably know the traffic here is awful, but the thing I hate the most about it is that they never stop working on the roads. You’re always out trying to get somewhere, and they’ve always got a road closed because they’re trying to improve the roads, but their improvements never actually make anything better!!! Up in Sandy Springs, which is one of the busiest parts of Atlanta, they have been working on the I-285 perimeter interchange with Georgia 400 since 2017!!!! Back in October, after nearly three years of work, they finally opened one section of the new road! So my advice to people moving to Atlanta is always know where your work is, and live very close to there you don’t want to spend a lot of time on the highways in Atlanta. So I hope you found that fun and informative if you’re making the move to Atlanta, please give me a call I’d love to talk to you, I’d love to help you find a house, Thanks!!!

 

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 by Parker

The Real Pros and Cons of Decatur Ga | Living in Decatur, Georgia

Decatur is a small town with a classic town square layout – all of the shops and restaurants surround an open plaza that hosts artists and musicians, dogs and families all year long in Atlanta’s mild climate. The DeKalb County courthouse and municipal buildings are close to the square as well. Dekalb county employees bring a bustling lunch business to the downtown Decatur restaurants.

The neighborhoods around the square are mostly single family homes, with some townhomes and a limited number of apartment rentals.

I love Decatur and have lived within the city of Decatur for almost 25 years now. I think the area is great and that Decatur is one of the most charming areas of Atlanta. I’ve created this video to give you a local’s view of the 5 pros and 5 cons of living in the City of Decatur.

 

 

 

I’m here to give you information that you may not not find out until you live in Decatur. Like I said, I love Decatur, but I’m here to give it to you straight, so let’s start with the CONS.

Con #1

Decatur has a cool downtown, and all of the charm of the downtown comes at a price – It’s Expensive to live in Decatur! You will have a very difficult time finding an updated house for less than $700k.

Decatur is a pretty small geographic area within the Metro Atlanta area, and it is in very high demand, which causes the price of homes within the city limits to be much higher than the Atlanta average.

In July 2020, the median home sale price in Decatur was over $600K. That means that half of the homes sell for more than $600k and half are below $600k. When people start looking at moving to Decatur, most people are shocked at how little $600K will buy. These aren’t Manhattan prices, of course, but they are pretty steep compared to the nearby neighborhoods outside of the city. For example, just outside the city limits of Decatur going towards Emory university, you can find an updated 3/2 ranch with a basement for $400k.

Con #2 is property taxes. Not only are the homes more expensive per square foot, the millage rate is higher than the unincorporated Dekalb County areas around Decatur. City of Decatur property taxes are sometimes double what you would pay on a similar house outside the city limits. To be fair, that is part of the price you pay to have a great public school system. City of Decatur Schools are some of the best in the Atlanta metro area. An average private school in Atlanta costs $700 per month at the low end. So, you really could look at the increased taxes as the value of a great school system. One of my next videos will be comparing home prices and property taxes inside and outside the Decatur city limits. If you are considering moving to the Decatur area and would like this information, click the subscribe button so that you will be notified when that video drops! Also, you can call me if you have any questions about Decatur or if you need help finding a home.

So let’s get to Con #3 – Decatur is somewhat isolated from rest of ATL – when you are getting around Atlanta, you are almost guaranteed to add 20 minutes to your drive if you live in Decatur. Most of Atlanta’s shopping and restaurants are in the midtown, Buckhead and Westside areas. Decatur does have many superior restaurants and lots of cute shops, but if you want fine dining or higher end shopping, you will have a drive.

Also, Decatur is not close to any major highways. Many people do still work in Downtown Atlanta and Decatur is convenient to that, but in Atlanta, large companies are shifting north to midtown/buckhead/and further north like Alpharetta – If you work at Emory, the CDC or CHOA, though, Decatur is very convenient. The Emory campus is exactly 2.5 miles from the Decatur Square via Clairmont Road.

 

This brings us to Con #4 of living in Decatur – Traffic!

Atlanta traffic in general is some of the worst in the country, and Decatur is no different. Part of the increased drive time to get to and from Decatur is due to the fact that there are few roads into Decatur. The main road that brings you into Decatur, Clairmont Road, can get very congested. It can take about 10 minutes for the 2 1/2 mile drive from downtown Decatur to Emory, and much much more during heavy commute times.

And the Final Con #5 about the City of Decatur – The Parking. If you move to Decatur and buy a single family home or townhome, you won’t have any trouble parking at your home. The main thing that Decatur residents complain about is the limited parking in the downtown commercial area. some businesses have left due to limited parking and problems they say it has caused their business. There limited on street parking – it can be hard to find a convenient spot, and you have to pay. Residents have complained that the minimum parking fee is $3, whether you are staying an hour or stopping for 10 minutes to pick up takeout. There is a large parking deck near the municipal buildings, though, and the charges there are pretty in line with what you would pay throughout Atlanta.

So, I’ve given you a local’s view of 5 Cons of the City of Decatur, so stick around and we will get into the 5 Cons of the City of Decatur.

Pro #1 of the City of the Decatur is that it has some of the most charming houses and neighborhoods anywhere in Atlanta. If you love a Craftsman bungalow or Farmhouse style home, Decatur is the place for you. The local historic preservation committee also ensures that new construction conforms to the surrounding neighborhoods. Just a side note, the permit office can be both a positive and a negative, since Renovations/remodels/builds can be difficult – permitting office is tougher than unincorporated Dekalb.

Pro #2 of the City of Decatur is the Community.

What people love most about Decatur is the community feel. As I mentioned before, if you’ve ever been to Asheville NC or Austin TX, Decatur has that same kind of creative vibe. Decatur is full of excellent farm to table restaurants, music and art festivals and community events sponsored by the city.

Decatur hosts the Decatur Arts Festival in the Spring. It is one of Atlanta’s largest arts festivals, and draws people from all over the city. It’s held on the square and several of the surrounding streets are closed off for 3 days. There are tons of arts and crafts vendors, food tents and trucks, live music on the square and family and kids activities.

In the fall, Decatur hosts the Decatur Book Festival. It’s a large multi-day festival on the square – there are tons of activities for families, and authors from all around the country come to give talks and sign books.

Pro #3 of the City of Decatur is the great selection of independent stores and restaurants.

Like I said earlier, there are tons of great restaurants in Decatur. The Brick Store Pub is a beer lover’s delight, possibly the best selection of beers anywhere in Atlanta. They really set Decatur off in 1997 when they opened. There was literally nothing in Downtown Decatur and then all of the sudden this great community pub opened and everything blossomed form there. It was really quite incredible to witness the rebirth of this city. I lived in nearby Avondale Estates in 1997, and it’s hard to believe now when you see how much Decatur has to offer, but back then there wasn’t much to do on a Friday night before the Brick Store came in!!!

Now, in downtown Decatur, you can eat some of Atlanta’s best tacos at Taqueria del Sol. My wife’s favorite tacos are the fried fish tacos that have spicy creamy sauce and pickled jalapeños – I love the carnitas.  In Decatur, you can sample Indian street food at a restaurant called Chai Patti..

Decatur also has a rich music scene. Eddies Attic is one of Atlanta’s oldest live music venues, right on Decatur square since 1991, they have hosted thousands of great artists like the Indigo Girls, The Black Crowes, Sugarland and John Mayer.

Pro #4 is that the City of Decatur is very walkable. Most of the neighborhoods in Decatur were built in the late 1800’s to the early 20th century, when people walked everywhere. Most neighborhoods have sidewalks and many are walking distance to neighborhood shops and restaurants. The downtown Decatur area is very walkable – once you park you car, you will not need it again for a day of shopping and dining.

One other quick thing to note is that Decatur square sits right on top of the MARTA station. MARTA is Atlanta’s subway system. It’s nice that it’s in Decatur, particularly if you need to get to the airport.

This takes us to the final Pro – #5 – The Schools! The City of Decatur is it’s own independent school system, and it is the best overall in the intown Atlanta area. It is small – there is just one high school, one middle school and 7 elementary schools. The elementary schools have heavily involved parents, high community involvement and excellent test scores. The excellent city schools is an enormous part of why the City of Decatur is such a desirable place to live. There are also several great private schools such as St. Thomas More, The Friends School, a Waldorf School and a Montessori School.

So there you have it – the straight talk about the pros and cons of living in the City of Decatur.

If you’d like more information and insider info about moving to and living in the areas around Emory University, please subscribe and watch my other videos.

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