Here is an example of what you can get in the suburbs of Atlanta for $600K.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandho ... -list-card
There are a couple of factors about this area which might not be obvious.
1) Georgia Lottery money is used for student HOPE Scholarships for college. There are lots of details which you can look up but basically if a student graduates from a Georgia high school with a B average they get their tuition and most fees to go to college for four years at a Georgia university, including Georgia Tech. (A lot of students don't keep a B average for the full four years and lose the scholarship.)
2) Georgia has a retirement income exclusion of $65K($130K for a couple) in addition to not taxing Social Security so unless you have pretty high income most retired people will not pay Georgia state income taxes. This resulted in me being able to deduct IRA and 401k contributions on my state taxes while I was working but now that I am retired I do not need to pay state taxes on withdrawals.
3) It is one of the few counties in the state though where there is a senior property tax exemption were you do not need to pay school property taxes once you are 62. This means that I paid less than $1,000 a year in property taxes on a pretty average house.
Atlanta of course has a reputation for bad traffic so you working out in the suburbs where the housing is more affordable and working downtown would be a terrible commute.
Judging schools if fiendishly difficult and every kid is different so a big question is if it is a good fit.
The schools here are usually based on the county school district. I was relocating here when I had a kid in middle school so I was paying a lot of attention to the high schools. We were basically picking possible high schools for my son to go to then looking for houses which within the boundaries for those high schools.
That county school district has well over a dozen large high schools in the Great School rankings of about 4 to 10(mostly 7 to 10) with them consistently getting higher ratings as the areas became more affluent, but none of the areas were terrible.
We were talking about a high school counselor about the differences in the high schools and it turned out that all the high schools in the school district had basically the same resources and curriculum. The big difference between the schools were the demographics of the students. There are many factors and it is complex but for example one major factor in predicting a students performance is the education level of the parents. In the more affluent areas the parents tended to have more college and graduate degrees than in the less affluent areas.
We were not interested in the houses in the less affluent area and the lower rated school likely had a lot of students with issues that we did not want our son to have to deal with. When we were visiting one of the best rated high schools it was in more affluent area and we happened to drive through the student parking lot. There were a noticeable number of cars like Mercedes and BMWs and even a Corvette. Even if your can easily afford it who in their right mind gets a Corvette for a 17 year old? We were concerned about our son having to kids who were too affluent and we later on found out that some issues at that high school with "rich kids". We ended up buying a house in a nice but slightly less affluent area.
Top schools can have issues be high stress too which might not be a good fit for your kid.
Actually visiting the schools was critical since they each had a different feel and there was one well rated school that we went to which looked good on paper but when we there a lot of temporary classrooms(basically mobile homes) because it was
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandho ... -list-card
There are a couple of factors about this area which might not be obvious.
1) Georgia Lottery money is used for student HOPE Scholarships for college. There are lots of details which you can look up but basically if a student graduates from a Georgia high school with a B average they get their tuition and most fees to go to college for four years at a Georgia university, including Georgia Tech. (A lot of students don't keep a B average for the full four years and lose the scholarship.)
2) Georgia has a retirement income exclusion of $65K($130K for a couple) in addition to not taxing Social Security so unless you have pretty high income most retired people will not pay Georgia state income taxes. This resulted in me being able to deduct IRA and 401k contributions on my state taxes while I was working but now that I am retired I do not need to pay state taxes on withdrawals.
3) It is one of the few counties in the state though where there is a senior property tax exemption were you do not need to pay school property taxes once you are 62. This means that I paid less than $1,000 a year in property taxes on a pretty average house.
Atlanta of course has a reputation for bad traffic so you working out in the suburbs where the housing is more affordable and working downtown would be a terrible commute.
Judging schools if fiendishly difficult and every kid is different so a big question is if it is a good fit.
The schools here are usually based on the county school district. I was relocating here when I had a kid in middle school so I was paying a lot of attention to the high schools. We were basically picking possible high schools for my son to go to then looking for houses which within the boundaries for those high schools.
That county school district has well over a dozen large high schools in the Great School rankings of about 4 to 10(mostly 7 to 10) with them consistently getting higher ratings as the areas became more affluent, but none of the areas were terrible.
We were talking about a high school counselor about the differences in the high schools and it turned out that all the high schools in the school district had basically the same resources and curriculum. The big difference between the schools were the demographics of the students. There are many factors and it is complex but for example one major factor in predicting a students performance is the education level of the parents. In the more affluent areas the parents tended to have more college and graduate degrees than in the less affluent areas.
We were not interested in the houses in the less affluent area and the lower rated school likely had a lot of students with issues that we did not want our son to have to deal with. When we were visiting one of the best rated high schools it was in more affluent area and we happened to drive through the student parking lot. There were a noticeable number of cars like Mercedes and BMWs and even a Corvette. Even if your can easily afford it who in their right mind gets a Corvette for a 17 year old? We were concerned about our son having to kids who were too affluent and we later on found out that some issues at that high school with "rich kids". We ended up buying a house in a nice but slightly less affluent area.
Top schools can have issues be high stress too which might not be a good fit for your kid.
Actually visiting the schools was critical since they each had a different feel and there was one well rated school that we went to which looked good on paper but when we there a lot of temporary classrooms(basically mobile homes) because it was
Statistics: Posted by Watty — Fri Feb 14, 2025 10:30 pm