Dunwoody vs East Cobb

[Cedar_ATL]

East Cobb is upscale suburbia; all strip malls; a few good (non-chain restaurants); very family-friendly and lots of kids' activities/facilities/services. Conservative, religious white protestants (yes, there are some Jewish people and facilities there). It is a bit marooned as even southeast Cobb is not near an interstate.

Next, you hit Sandy Springs. Sandy Springs fought for decades and had the state constitution changed to allow it to break away from parasitic Fulton County. The area of Sandy Springs from Johnson Ferry/Abernathy south all the way to the border with Buckhead on Wieuca is extremely expensive and upscale. For south Sandy Springs, the public elementary school (Heards Ferry) is excellent, the middle school is so-so (due to including non-english speakers/children of day laborers that live in the run-down apartments that line Roswell Rd; not trying to be racist, just trying to get a picture across); and the high school is good. It is very close to I-285 and GA-400; very convenient location. Sandy Springs has several churches, and is Jewish friendly (with several private schools, etc.). Sandy Springs is very family friendly with several karate studios, Jump Start Gym, CatchAir, Sandy Springs Funhouse, Gymboree, and the excellent new Morgan Falls Park located within its city limits. I found the taxes to be lower than Brookhaven (DeKalb County) and the City of Atlanta.

Dunwoody is in DeKalb, a horribly run county. The roads are much worse than Sandy Springs or East Cobb, and traffic is terrible due to 1 lane roads supporting hundreds of thousands of people going to/from work in the Perimeter business district. The school district is in danger of losing its accreditation. There are lots of older, nice homes. Be careful of which school your home is zoned for. Dunwoody is a very Jewish-friendly area, also with some old southern churches. You have the Dunwoody Village area, and Perimeter Mall (which are also within a 2 - 4 mile drive from Sandy Springs).

You can tell where my heart lies. If you can afford it, move to the Heards Ferry Elementary district of Sandy Springs.

[IntlAtl]

I always smile when I hear the statement that East Cobb is not quite what it used to be. My husband and I moved to Atlanta for a promotion five years ago and vouched to never venture out to the suburbia again (we owned a suburban house in Florida before), so we rented for a while in the Perimeter Mall area, I walked to work at the Concourse, he rode Marta to his job in Buckhead and everything seemed just peachy. The only area we looked for a new house were Brookhaven, Sandy Springs and parts of Buckhead.

And then I got pregnant... And all of a sudden, the only two things that mattered in our choice of a future home were excellent (not just good) schools and reasonable commute. There's no school district in the Atlanta metro with the possible exception of John's Creek clusters, which were way too far out in the boonies for our liking (and the houses were all new and lacked character), that stands close to Dickerson/Walton. To achieve the sane quality going the private schools route would cost about $25,000 per year per kid, so our plan to have 3 children meant we had to increase our income by $150,000 per year (marginal taxes are a *****). The choice seemed easy and we became homeowners in the SE East Cobb. Immediately after we moved, I made two observations. First, my commute to the Concourse became shorter (20-25 min) than when I walked and is extremely comparable to most Dunwoody residents' driving time. Second, my husband's commute of 25 min is shorter and more predictable and pleasant than rushing to make the Marta train only to find out that it left 3 min earlier than schedule.

A couple of other observations. I often get stuck driving behind a middle school bus on Papermill Rd and see the kids getting off the said public school bus and walking towards million-dollar homes (to the poster, who claimed that the superrich choose SS/Dwoody, please drive along Columns, Papermill, and the general ACC area and take note of new construction). These parents have an option of sending their kids to a private school, yet choose Dickerson and Walton. This is not going to change anytime soon.

And, finally, there are three more young married employees in our office, all of them making over $200k. The two couples with kids have recently purchased houses in East Cobb (one actually sold his recently bought place in Brookhaven) and the third (childless at this time) couple moved to Brookhaven. All of them clamored for urban living before they started having kids, but East Cobb is where they ended up as a place to raise a family.

Perimeter is justly posed to experience above-market employment growth, and East Cobb as the closest family-friendly suburb with low taxes, conservative county politics and high quality schools will reap tremendous benefits from the growth in office employment.