Top Cities To Raise A Family In Georgia

When you’re talking about family oriented neighborhoods there’s several factors that come to mind.  Generally speaking it’s schools, parks and low crime.  Obviously those are things that everyone wants whether they have a gaggle of kids or not.   Wallethub just released a study the Top Cities To Raise A Family In Georgia that’s not your run of the mill look at ratings on GreatSchools plus crime and gave us some pretty cool metrics of our cities here in the metro Atlanta area.

Top Cities To Raise A Family In Georgia

  1. top cities to raise a family in georgiaJohns Creek – Everyone’s favorite city is back in another review.
  2. Milton – The former horse country of Alpharetta is number 2 on this list.
  3. Alpharetta – How could Alpharetta not be on a best of list for “metro” Atlanta.
  4. Suwanee, GA  – On of the most popular cities with ties to Forsyth and Gwinnett.
  5. Peachtree City, GA – Even Southsiders get some love.
  6. Decatur, GA  – Yes, I know, we were surprised too!
  7. Woodstock, GA – An alternative with better prices than most of the above.
  8. Roswell, GA  – Closer to Atlanta Proper and right on top of 400
  9. Dunwoody, GA – Raise a family?  Not sure about that one.  Great location for convenience.
  10. Kennesaw, GA  – Great choice.

Looking at the above list, you might think the researchers left out Affordability and how on Earth did Decatur become a “great city for families?”  In addition, how does Snellville rank higher at 23 than Buford at 51.  In fact, as a local real estate agent I’d only agree with 1,3,4,7,8, and 10.   Now to be fair the study did research of ALL the cities in Georgia and Columbus metro area had 2 cities that made the cut.   When you break down their scoring you find out that Johns Creek was considered most affordable.

So how did they come up with this study, they had a bunch of professors…  Now as someone who went to Georgia Tech and came out with a degree I won’t sneeze at professors but how about some families?  Could we maybe ask families?  So is the study trash?  No, look at some great data we got.

Before we go through the list it’s worth mentioning that we’re not bashing College Park.  It’s actually a nice up and come, revitalized area but as you will see in this report, the research shows it’s likely the worst place to raise a family per these researchers.

Georgia City with the Highest Number of Attractions

Atlanta wins this one, followed by Savannah.  Suprisingly top 5 member is Marietta!  Not surprising the cities with the least attractions are the smallest one.

Georgia Cities with the highest median income.

  1. Johns Creek
  2. Decatur
  3. Milton 
  4. Roswell

Least affordable housing, College Park – dead last, Moultrie.     Those in Johns Creek made 3 times what those in Moultrie made.

Georgia Cities with the Most Affordable Housing

Johns Creek is the only one on the top 5 list that’s a real city and/or close to Atlanta.  Meanwhile the least affordable housing goes to a bunch of small cities near Norcross, oh yeah and College Park.

Georgia Cities With The Most Families With Kids

Now we’re getting somewhere right. Let’st see.

Norcross tops this list with Johns Creek and Alpharetta.  Meanwhile Vinings apparently is all kid free.

Georgia Cities with the Lowest Crime

  1. Milton
  2. Johns Creek
  3. Alpharetta
  4. Peachtree City
  5. Loganville

Highest Crime is apparently in East Point and College Park.  If you’re curious, there’s 81TIMES more crime in College Park than Milton.

Georga Cities with the lowest Divorce Rate

Johns Creek, Suwanee and Milton.  Highest Divorce rate… hmmm  let’s see … you guessed it East Point and College Park.

So you can see it’s a real mixed bag unless your Johns Creek or College Park there’s a lot of different things going on.  I don’t want to make this a “use a realtor” pitch but hey, there’s a ton of data and you should get someone to help you intrepret it.

So what do you think are the Top Cities To Raise A Family In Georgia?

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Joshua Jarvis
Joshua Jarvis

Joshua and his family have served Gwinnett County for over 20 years, specializing in homes for sale in Buford, Braselton, Hoschton and areas in the north Gwinnett area. Jarvis Team Realty has sold over 1,000 homes all over Atlanta