ALPHARETTA, Ga. — If you’re a fresh college graduate, finding an affordable apartment in north Metro Atlanta might just feel like a wild goose chase.
Let’s say you just got a job in Alpharetta. It’s your first professional job, and you’re excited. You ideally want to live there for a quick commute because you’ve heard about the traffic in and around Atlanta — it could take 45 minutes just to drive a dozen miles.
So, you begin looking for one-bedrooms in Alpharetta, because you’re an adult and you’re tired of living in college housing where roommates have too many people over, live in a pigsty and don’t pay their rent on time.
But, after searching, you start sweating. The price ranges are a little too high for your new salary — way better than working retail but not really good enough to afford living on your own in Alpharetta.
A search on Apartments.com yields a one-bedroom in Alpharetta for $1,300, but you realize it’s for people ages 55 and over. Okay, okay, there’s another with no age requirement for the same price, but you keep looking anyway — you probably need something less than $1,100.
Like other Georgians under 25 years old, you make around $40,000 a year in your entry level job, and that’s about $20,000 less than the median income of residents of Alpharetta, a city that was ranked the most expensive city to live in Georgia, according to Zumper’s “Atlanta Metro Report.”
You’re not the only one facing this conundrum — Metro Atlanta’s 20-34 age cohort by population ranks seventh in the nation, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Cities in a 10-mile radius are a little cheaper — still not within a realistic price range, but eating ramen every day is worth the peace to you, and your parents don’t mind cosigning for a place that requires you to make triple the cost of rent a…
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