North GA vs South GA: Where Should You Live?

we have a saying here that anything north of macon is the metro atlanta area and anything south of atlanta is south georgia but unrealistic geography aside north georgia and south georgia are virtually two different worlds as someone who grew up in south georgia and has now been a resident of north georgia area for the last eight years i can tell you that firsthand hi i'm sarah maslowski with key point homes group we are a real estate team specializing and helping people relocate from all over the country right here to georgia our team is based out of north georgia more specifically beaufort and our office is right on the hall county gwinnett line we're just about 40 miles north of atlanta and a few minutes shy of lake lanier that is a massive man-made lake that sprawls throughout five different counties here in georgia and our team specializes in areas all across the northeast metro atlanta area we cover a pretty big span we do however get lots of phone calls from people who are interested in towns all across the state especially in south georgia one of the best things about reaching out to us is that we are able to put you in contact with one of our great partner agents to make sure that your needs are being served at a really high level so if you're looking for a home in south georgia middle georgia or north georgia we have the connections to help you find a really great agent so we mostly talk about north georgia here on our channel but let's talk about south georgia what are those differences and why would you want to consider maybe living in south georgia and what are the pros and cons that you should consider so let's start with a brief geography lesson that one that i told you at the beginning of the of the video that's completely false geography aside that's what metro atlanta people think the the north georgia and south georgia is all right so georgia has five regions the top three regions encompass the mountains then you have the piedmont region which is where we are located and then at the bottom of the state you have the coastal plain region so looking at this map you'll see that we have a fall line that essentially splits the state in half augusta a town in middle georgia although that's funny to me that technically it's middle georgia but i don't really consider it middle georgia we get a lot of questions about augusta and it sits right there on this fall line essentially the state just kind of drops down and flattens out after augusta so back when georgia was established it made trade easier because of the rivers and streams and so this is why when you're searching for a home in present day let's say augusta you're going to find much older homes many of which were built in the 1800s and early 1900s like this historical home built in 1760 so the reason people originally moved to south georgia was because the land below the fall line was flat and the soil was better which was great for growing crops it was very different than north georgia where crops were so much more difficult to grow because you had mountains and the good old georgia red clay now i say that you're still going to have red clay down in south georgia as well now this fall line that i'm talking about it's what we commonly refer to as the nat line so if you remember in this previous video we talked about gnats the nat line of georgia and that is because gnats thrive off of wet sandy soils and that is the perfect conditions in the coastal region area now let me tell you having grown up in valdosta georgia the gnats are terrible and i do not miss this at all not at all and so not only do you have gnats but uh we lived over in brunswick area near saint simons and over there you have things things called sand gnats and they bite you they're like invisible no seems and all of a sudden you're just like getting eaten alive and it's because of these terrible gnats that was a rude awakening for us whenever we moved there we perfect great weather to sit outside and then you sit outside and then all of a sudden you start getting eaten alive and you're like what are these things sand nuts all right so despite the fact that areas like savannah and augusta which were established much earlier in history the piedmont region is the highest populated region in georgia that's where you can kind of consider the north metro atlanta area and this is mainly due to the fact that atlanta is in it the reason that so many people are drawn to this region is because as a whole there is so much more growth in development which means job opportunities and a chance at a higher income according to the 2020 u.s census fulton county where atlanta is located has a median income of 72 000 almost 73 000 and it has over 39 000 employer establishments that's where you can go to get all those jobs now there were just over 1 million residents in the atlanta metro and 54 of these residents have a bachelor's degree in atlanta or a higher education degree the employment rate was 64 as well now if we look at forsyth county which is where alpharetta is located they have a median household income of a hundred and thirteen thousand dollars and they have sixty seven percent employment rate and then gwinnett county has a median household income of seventy three thousand dollars and a population just shy of 1 million now if we compare that to richmond county where augusta is located there they have a population of just over 200 000 people with a median household income of 43 000 and they only have 4 000 just a little over 4 000 employer establishments and when we look at their employment rate it's only 51 percent and only 22 percent of residents there have a bachelor's degree or higher education looking at chatham county which is where savannah is located they have a population of just under 300 000 so bigger than augusta and the median household income there is just shy of 58 000 and they have just over 8 000 employer establishments there with a 59 employment rate now all of this is to say it's based on the 2020 census the northern half of the state has a higher population higher percentage of job opportunities and higher income levels so based on these factors you're going to find that the cost of living is dramatically different between north and south georgia of course if you are looking at a house on the coast on south georgia it's going to cost you a pretty penny but overall home prices in north georgia specifically the piedmont region that atlanta region metro atlanta area is going to be significantly higher than they are in south georgia now if you paid attention to houses that i showed earlier like those that were built in augusta that were built in the early 1900s you would have noticed that they are substantially less expensive than the towns i talk about regularly here on our channel not just cheaper than towns like alpharetta or john's creek or swanny which you've heard me talk about the high price tag before but even towns that tend to be a little bit more affordable like gainesville and brazilton and tequila now as a whole the northern area on the state on paper is more desirable to live in of course there are reasons why people would prefer to live in south georgia instead of north georgia south georgia and north georgia have drastically different feels in many ways weather-wise geographically and the overall vibe if you will so in south georgia we talked about that land is very flat i mean flat and you've also got marshes and swamps that cover a big area that make it hard to inhabit so the okefenoke area of south georgia there's hardly anything there so this is one thing that was surprising to me whenever we moved from south georgia area to north georgia is that in south georgia if you drove 15 20 minutes out of town you were in the sticks you were amongst the pine trees you were driving through swampland you saw nothing you were lucky if you came across a gas station and you know it was like one of those gas stations where like do i really want to stop here or do i want to risk running out of gas that is the kind of area that there is down there in south georgia and you would drive you know 30 45 minutes until you got to the next town that is so different than here in the piedmont region north georgia and north metro atlanta area you can drive for two three hours and never run out of towns that you're running into you would never be in the sticks unless you specifically sought out those areas where you wanted to be in the sticks um so you know it's not uncommon for us here to get in our car and drive you know what we think is not that far for dinner 30 45 minutes but when we lived in valdosta we also lived in a tiny town in douglas getting in the car and driving 30 45 minutes away for dinner would seem unreal because you're like literally like driving through the woods to get to some place and yet i think it feels a lot different because you're surrounded by just people and traffic and things to look at so it doesn't really feel like you're going out of town to go to dinner whereas back in south georgia we literally sometimes would go out of town to go to dinner so another really cool thing about south georgia is that you have a really great coastline so you have a hundred or so miles that make up georgia's coastline and there's a half million acres of salt marshes and of course you know you have the beaches at jekyll tybee and st simon's island as also and you know that was a great thing about being in south georgia is that we could drive over to the georgia coast and we could be there uh in two-ish hours or so and enjoy that or heck you were even kind of closer to the gulf coast or even a three-hour drive down to the gulf coast of florida and you could enjoy those amazing beaches and so one of the downsides of living up here in this area right now is that if you want to go to a beach you're looking at a good five-hour drive six hours if you want to go down to the gulf coast and enjoy those great sugar sand beaches one thing to know about the beaches on the east coast of georgia they're brown sand brown water you know it's not very pretty but uh but it is fun so one interesting thing when you compare georgia's coastline it's only about 100 miles long and if you look at lake lanier which we talk about a lot on our channel you have over 692 miles of coastline around lake lanier to enjoy so in north georgia if you wanted to spend a day on the water you are going to head to the lake like lake lanier or hartwell or alatuna down south if you want to spend a day on the water you're looking at a pond you're going to go fishing in a pond or you are going to get in the car and drive to the beach now in the north georgia area one of the great things that i love here is that you have the mountains so you can take advantage of the hiking and wineries and you also have a little bit of a cooler climate there's nothing like that down in south georgia you have hot hot and more hot one of the things i also noticed and enjoy about being up here in north georgia is that you have a lot less humidity and you experience way more seasons here so growing up in valdosta we lived for many years in brunswick as well if you wanted to have a winter wardrobe you maybe got to wear your sweater or your coat or your boots that you got maybe a handful of times throughout the winter and so that's definitely not the case here in the north metro atlanta area north georgia you get to wear those things all the time but it's also not something that you're like freezing your your tushy off right uh you really get to experience that winter and one of the things i love is that you also get to experience snow flurries which are always very very exciting to me that is not happening ever in south georgia i say ever it did happen one time when i was a child some freak thing and i remember that event vividly it was so so exciting but uh so while that was like a once in a lifetime experience in south georgia and then every single year since we've been here in north georgia going on eight years now it has snowed one day out of the year and it's been magical so another big difference between north georgia and south georgia is the shopping of course if you are going to be closer to the atlanta area or north of atlanta you are going to have far more shopping options and amenities things to do concerts events everything you're going to find yourself gravitating and going to a lot more things in north georgia north metro atlanta area than what there ever is in south georgia so i remember growing up in valdosta it was a growing town but it was still kind of small there's an air force base there we've got a really great college university there but growing up in valdosta we would drive to tallahassee florida which was an hour away just to go to sam's yes the sam's club like it was an event and it was an exciting thing and i remember getting the samples and all because valdosta did not have a sams and it was a you know front page news whenever valdosta got a sam's club even though the town has grown it's still a relatively small town and like most south georgia towns you're going to have to drive to get to many big box department stores and other mall brands so homecoming dress shopping you know all of those events where you might need a special occasion something it was hey let's get in the car and let's drive to tallahassee or let's drive uh you know the two and a half hours to jacksonville to go shopping at the big mall because the only store that they would have at the the mall in valdosta would be like a belk so that's a local or southern department store i don't know what the equivalent would be where you are but we would have a mall but it would just be a handful of stores and it's kind of still that way to this day so you're going to have some bigger towns in south georgia they're going to have big box stores like lowe's and home depot and you know grocery stores and things like that but if you really want to go shopping at kind of like those special occasion stores or like those specialty stores like sephora or ulta or things like that you're probably gonna have to get in the car and drive for a good hours maybe sometimes two hours to get to the closest town that's going to have those things now if you don't care about being close to these options and you're thinking huh we really only go there once or twice a year i don't mind getting in the car and driving you're obviously going to have an overall lower cost of living in these areas that have kind of like less access to amenities and south georgia may just be the place for you another big difference between south georgia and north georgia is the sense of community so i mentioned that i grew up in valdosta and our town had two high schools bigger high schools but two we had the county high school lounge go lounge and the city high school valdosta high school and sports rivalries are huge and still a very very big deal now if you'll compare that to where i currently live which is in gainesville which is in hall county now this county they have a city high school and they have 10 county high schools and things are well a bit different right so the entire town isn't attending the one football game in town that night or the two football games that are going on the sense of community in south georgia is definitely something special but it's also it can be kind of limiting so towns in south georgia and again this is my opinion it's kind of like where everyone knows everyone for better or worse people tend to grow up there and then they raise their kids there and then their kids and you know you just everyone knows everyone and then when you compare that to many towns here in north georgia or the metro atlanta area because it's so densely populated majority of the people that live here uh are transplants because of all these amazing job opportunities and because of the metropolitan area there's a lot of transient people that relocate to the area from other parts of the country where that's just not that opportunity draw is not happening in south georgia and even if you did grow up in the metro atlanta area even moving 20 miles away kind of put you in an entirely different demographic geographic area unlike say south georgia so those are the differences between north georgia and south georgia which one would you consider moving to and of course if you're considering any kind of move at all to georgia make sure that you give my team a call we would be happy to put you in touch with the perfect agent to help make your move and if you have not watched these videos about moving to georgia they are an absolute must you want to make sure that you avoid these mistakes and these are the things that you need to know before moving to georgia

Channel: Moving to Georgia

Views: 8,813

Keywords: realtor, georgia, first time home buyer, buying a house, living in north georgia, living in northern georgia, pros and cons of living in north georgia, moving to north geo, moving to north georgia, moving to geo, moving to georgia, moving to georgia pros and cons, living in georgia, pros and cons of living in georgia, relocating to ge, relocating to georgia, relocating to atlanta georgia, north georgia vs south georgia, north georgia real estate, keypoint homes group

Id: d-ZAsAXKGB4

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022