Irish person moving to Atlanta welcomes advice :) (Sandy Springs, Roswell: transplants, real estate)

[didi_32]

Hi,
My husband has been offered a job in Atlanta and we are contemplating a move there. We currently live in Ireland and are a bit apprehensive about uprooting ourselves to start a new life in Atlanta.
I've read in previous posts that traffic is a problem, my husband's job is located at 1400 Lake Hearn Drive, near Sandy Springs.
Would you recommend that we live in the suburbs to be close to his work?
Do you know any good areas in that location?
Would it be possible to live in the city and commute or would this mean traffic hell?
What is the public transport system like? Can you get from the suburbs to the city easily?

My husband will be working but i won't be working initially. I guess I am slightly concerned that I may become isolated if we live in the suburbs with little to do...

If you have any other insights that you would like to share, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[plessthanpointohfive]

Hi!

Well, first off, you may know that much of America is obsessed with all things Irish. St. Paddy's Day is usually celebrated in high form here. So, people here are probably going to be delighted you're moving in.

Second, Sandy Springs is a suburb of Atlanta (as you probably already know). If your husband's work is there then you should live there and traffic shouldn't be so terrible. Most of the really bad traffic in Atlanta is people who live in the suburbs commuting into the city for work. If you live, work, and play in the burbs you should be okay.

There is a MARTA station in Sandy Springs so if anyone worked in downtown Atlanta, or anywhere along the rail, you could potentially have an easy commute. Or, conversely, if you wanted to live in the city your husband might be able to get from the city to work okay. I'm not familiar with the buslines out there to tell you if he could get a quick ride from the station to near his workplace.

When you do start working, what will you be doing? I want to get an idea of where you'd be working in relation to where you might live.

You shouldn't be isolated in the suburbs. You'll be surrounded by other homeowners. Sure, when you're new to a country (or even a state from another state) it's going to take a while to make friends. Do you have children? Children are usually quick gateways to meeting your peer group, so to speak.

[IntownHomes247]

didi, I have a colleague who is originally from Dublin and still has family there and spends part of each year there. He is an excellent real estate agent and has lived in Atlanta for many years so he could give you an authentic Irish perspective on the city. Just PM me if you'd like his contact information!

And welcome to Atlanta!

[Kriswal]

Originally Posted by didi_32

Hi,
My husband has been offered a job in Atlanta and we are contemplating a move there. We currently live in Ireland and are a bit apprehensive about uprooting ourselves to start a new life in Atlanta.
I've read in previous posts that traffic is a problem, my husband's job is located at 1400 Lake Hearn Drive, near Sandy Springs.
Would you recommend that we live in the suburbs to be close to his work?
Do you know any good areas in that location?
Would it be possible to live in the city and commute or would this mean traffic hell?
What is the public transport system like? Can you get from the suburbs to the city easily?

My husband will be working but i won't be working initially. I guess I am slightly concerned that I may become isolated if we live in the suburbs with little to do...

If you have any other insights that you would like to share, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Hello, well welcome to the USA. It is great here. I moved to GA in late 2005, we move to Dallas, GA. I hate it here if we happen to stay in GA we would move to Roswell or some where around there. Dallas is a dump, like trailer type dump. If you have kids then you want to be very careful were you are. Take the time to research area's, like by calling City Hall's, ect. If you want a nice house then stay on the East side of of Atlanta. Good luck and make sure to go to Disney World in FL it is only a 8 hour drive.

[gentlearts]

I second the motion of whoever said to live near where your husband will be working. My husband travels around the south for work and if he needs to drive near Atlanta he will go WAY out of his way to avoid it. It's a nightmare to get ANYWHERE no matter what time of day it is.
Other than that, it's has a great climate, lots of things to see and do, and I bet you'll have a great adventure.

[blackrabbit]

Originally Posted by didi_32

Hi,
My husband has been offered a job in Atlanta and we are contemplating a move there. We currently live in Ireland and are a bit apprehensive about uprooting ourselves to start a new life in Atlanta.
I've read in previous posts that traffic is a problem, my husband's job is located at 1400 Lake Hearn Drive, near Sandy Springs.
Would you recommend that we live in the suburbs to be close to his work?
Do you know any good areas in that location?
Would it be possible to live in the city and commute or would this mean traffic hell?
What is the public transport system like? Can you get from the suburbs to the city easily?

My husband will be working but i won't be working initially. I guess I am slightly concerned that I may become isolated if we live in the suburbs with little to do...

If you have any other insights that you would like to share, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Avoid the outer suburbs in my opinion. They will seem very boring and sterile.

Within about 2 miles of Lake Hearn in Sandy Springs, Brookhaven and Dunwoody there are tons of expats from the UK and Ireland living. My office has 5 alone. Also 4 and counting pubs owned by Brits and a Dubliner right by.
We live about a mile from you husbands place of work within walking distance of a marta. Run a search on the zips of 30319 and 30342 inside the perimeter. Pick a home in either and he will have a 5 minute comute and you will have all city facilities within a 5 minute range and great parks to walk in.
Traffic is no issue if you live this far in. Its if you live in the suburbs further out you will have an issue going in.
You will find housing crazy cheap after Dublin. We got a 4 bed house in 30319 for much less than our 2 bed flat in London.

[didi_32]

Thanks everyone for the great advice. Sorry about the late reply but we are in different time zones
I thought that the Sandy Springs area was further out in the suburbs than it obviously is...that's good to hear. I will look up those zip codes blackrabbit - that sounds like a good thing to do.

When you do start working, what will you be doing? I want to get an idea of where you'd be working in relation to where you might live.

when i start working, it will be in the IT sector.
It is probably going to take about 4 months for us to complete the move. it is very exciting though...and a bit scary. My husband already knows some people there so hopefully the friends thing won't be too difficult.
So what do people do in Atlanta for fun?

[Mamato3BB's]

Welcome to the states! I think you will like it here. My father was born and raised in Belfast, unforutunately I have never been there to check it out. I moved to Atlanta from Chicago recently and have found people to be friendly. Most people living in our area are transplants too so they understand how it feels. My best advice is live as close to where you work as possible but try and stay in a good school district. Even if you don't have kids the resale of the house will be better if you should need to sell. Have fun moving!

[plessthanpointohfive]

Since you're in IT you're probably going to find work in Marietta, Alpharetta, or downtown Atlanta. There are likely other areas but those areas have a lot of those jobs. If you end up working downtown then you will want to try to live close to a MARTA station.

What do Atlantans do for fun? Well, we have lots of little weekend festivals all over the city...Inman Park Festival, Summerfest in Virginia-Highland, Decatur Art Festival, Atlanta Art Festival, Decatur Book Festival, Screen on the Green, Concerts on the Square in Decatur, Dogwood Festival...and many, many others. There's a lot of local music venues, local theater, and lots of good local restaurants. Of course there are night clubs as well as pubs. My girlfriends and I like to pubcrawl in Virginia-Highland.

You'll have to go to the Angel in Decatur. It's a pub that bills itself as being authentic. You'll have to see for yourself and let us know!

[atlantagreg30127]

Here is the interactive map viewer for MARTA, the rail system here. Takes a minute to figure out, but you can zoom in to street level views, and slide it around: MARTA - Map Viewer (broken link) This may help figure out if where he'll be working is close to the Sandy Spring station or not (on the North line).

In order to be "isolated" (per your earlier concern) you'd have to be in a much further-out area than Sandy Springs. You'll soon learn that the closer-in suburbs are very crowded as well (Sandy Springs, Smyrna, Duluth, etc). And unfortunately yes, taffic is not just a "concern", it's a way of life here. Atlanta was ranked second only under L.A. in terms of traffic congestion, and unfortunately, Sandy Springs is closer to the more congested areas, so living closer to where he'll be working really is important if you want to avoid it all. Even if you can't use MARTA for work, you'll be able to use it if you want to go intown to explore around.

Once you get established and are comfortable driving around, go North on Georgia 400 (highway) about an hour and there are some factory outlet stores in a mall. Link: North Georgia Premium Outlets : neat place to pick up some bargains, and since you'll be converting into the not-too-great American dollar, you should have extra money to shop with it. LOL. A little further north of the outlets is a neat arts and crafts town called "Dahlonega" (duh-lawn-eh-gah). Worth a trip. Link: Dahlonega-Lumpkin County - Home

Folks have already talked about the festivals. For fun people here eat out a lot, though you're more likely to see more national chain restaurants here than you will unique privately owned places like you do in Ireland or the UK areas. There's good stuff out there though - just look around for the little holes in the wall. Now uh... since I had some Irish relatives way back when I'll bring this up... folks don't quite um.. "drink as a recreational activity" like some of the lucky Irish do, though. So tell hubby to watch the bottle if he's going to drive here.
http://bestsmileys.com/drinking/2.gif (broken link)