Moving closer to work (Atlanta area)

[treemarie]

Hello, Mustachians.

We are flirting with the idea of moving closer to my husband's workplace in order to reduce his commute time.  He currently has a 23 mile commute which takes about 1.25 hour in the morning and 45-60 minutes in the evening, due to Atlanta's lovely traffic.  If he bikes and rides mass transit, it takes longer (about 1.5 each way). He drives into work 4 days per week and works from home one day per week.  (Increasing work from home is not an option.  He only gets to do it once per week bc of my work schedule and the fact that we homeschool our children. His boss isn't keen on the work from home thing and it isn't realistic for DH's position).
We live in the northern suburbs and he works in Buckhead.  Unfortunately, we did the drive till you qualify thing back in '06 and our house is worth less than we bought it for (and what we still owe) and Buckhead is a very wealthy area.   Right now, our house is fairly small (compared to others in our area), 3bd/2ba, 1144sqft.  Rentals we can find in the area we are looking are much smaller or are triple (or more) what we pay for our mortgage.  Commute calculators tell us we would save about $400 by eliminating his commute, but that doesn't get us near what rent/mortgage would be in the area we are looking in... 

I work six shifts per month at an area hospital, but the move would decrease my mileage as well and mass transit would be an option for me since we would be much closer to a station.  I am not interested in working more to afford this move.  We homeschool the kids, so someone has to be home with them everyday.

To complicate things further, we love our church and it is in a different direction than both home and work.  We go twice a week minimum and are often there a few more times per month for extras. DH already drives on Wednesday nights up to church from work, so he isn't terribly concerned about the church aspect.  We already drive about 12 miles to get to church from home.  A move would make the church drive now 27 miles one way. 

Anyone have any experience in the Buckhead/Atlanta area?  Anything affordable around there?  Can anyone tell me your experience with downsizing or drastically increasing housing costs to get closer to work? We want more family time and less time wasted driving. 

Help! 

[themagicman]

Anyone have any experience in the Buckhead/Atlanta area?  Anything affordable around there?  Can anyone tell me your experience with downsizing or drastically increasing housing costs to get closer to work? We want more family time and less time wasted driving. 

Help! 

I live in metro Atlanta as well, so I definitely know where you are coming from. I agree that him taking public transportation would probably not be a good idea in Atlanta. I would probably not move closer to his work because, as you said, it would be a signifigant amount of money. Can he change his hours at work? I used to work downtown and probably live further North than you all and I changed my work hours to 7-4 and it saved a lot of commute time! There is a whole lot less traffic at those times and depending on where you live, I would think it would at least cut it in half.
Also, if he was not allowed to do that, then I would start looking for different jobs closer to where you all live. Roswell has a ton of jobs and it would be a lot closer drive for him!

[Jack]

Go south, young lady, and grow up with the city.

In Atlanta, "drive till you qualify" is silly: to find a real deal, you need to get closer to downtown. Buckhead may be expensive, but some of the neighborhoods farther south, especially the ones between downtown and Decatur, are not. Examples include Old Fourth Ward, Reynoldstown, Kirkwood, East Atlanta, Grant Park, Ormewood Park, etc. Depending on your price range, even some neighborhoods closer to Buckhead, such as Loring Hights, Berkeley Park or Underwood Hills might be viable. And if you're okay with your current square footage and don't care about a yard, even condos in Midtown or Atlantic Station should be reasonable.

(Pro tip: Other than on the downtown connector, traffic in the suburbs is actually much worse than it is in Atlanta proper.)

[HairyUpperLip]

Anyone know of any good areas in the downtown/midtown area with good public schools?

Really tired of Gwinnett life. Wife and I would love to be in the city, but we have a 16 month old baby.

[Jack]

Anyone know of any good areas in the downtown/midtown area with good public schools?

Really tired of Gwinnett life. Wife and I would love to be in the city, but we have a 16 month old baby.

Grady High School cluster is good, but expensive (except for condos). The Maynard Jackson High School cluster has reasonable house prices and good charter schools and public elementary schools; the public middle and high schools will be good by the time your baby is old enough to need them.

If you want to literally be near downtown/midtown, those are your only reasonable choices. If you really just mean "inside the Perimeter," you could also consider the North Atlanta High School cluster (Buckhead, i.e., expensive), Decatur City Schools (houses similar in price to Grady cluster), or maybe the Druid Hills cluster of Dekalb County Schools (Emory area, i.e., expensive).

Most of the neighborhoods I recommended in my previous post are in the Maynard Jackson cluster; Old Fourth Ward is in the Grady cluster and Loring Hights, Berkeley Park and Underwood Hills are in the North Atlanta cluster.