I suppose you're right. You could. But why pay all that just to live in the city limits when you can go right down the road and take the same money, get the same or a better house, and have the best schools and one of the nicest communities in the state.
Agree.
Let's see, $1.8M house in B'ham, $25k in taxes, $40k to send 2 kids to Altamont.
OR.
$1.8M house in Mt. Brook (
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2865-Canterbury-Rd-Mountain-Brk-AL-35223/978650_zpid/), $15k in property tax (according to Zillow at least), two kids in Mt. Brook schools for essentially free.
Hrmm...
My experience with the type people that will buy million dollar houses was that they're usually very concerned with value and return on their money. Schools aside, I'd say that investing in real estate in Mt. Brook, while at a premium, has less inherent risk than investing in real estate in Birmingham proper. Now, perhaps they'd see the value in sending their children to The Altamont School instead of MBHS, Homewood, or Vestavia. I can tell you though that schools like Altamont are having to try harder and harder to get enrollment up. My mother in law is the head of finance at Altamont, and they are consistently trying to come up with ways to get new students.
Private schools in Birmingham are nowhere NEAR as large as they are in somewhere like Memphis, precisely because you CAN live in a suburb and get an amazing education at a public school. MUS, CBHS, St. Dominic, St. Mary's, Hutchison, St. Louis, Campus School, all of those in memphis have classes numbering at least 100 graduate every year. Compare that to somewhere like Altamont that has maybe 40 on a GOOD year. Indian Springs, Briarwood, Altamont, Westminister, I bet they don't have 250 combined total graduate in a year.
Not to say that all of the Memphis City Schools are bad, there are a couple of good ones, but many of them are terrible.
