Moved up in size and hated the zip code, now considering going back down
Bought a 2,400 sq ft place in Covington, GA last spring, came from a 1,650 sq ft house in Decatur. Price difference was about 110k, so the move made sense on paper. But I've been sitting on it for eight months now and the neighborhood never clicked the way the old one did, and I don't mean aesthetically, I mean the walkability, the coffee shop two blocks out, knowing the people two doors down. Covington is fine. It's just not that. I'm looking at what a downsize back toward Decatur would actually cost me, and the numbers are uncomfortable: I'd be selling at maybe a 4% gain after carrying costs, eating two sets of closing costs, and buying back into a market where the same 1,600 sq ft I left is now listed around 340 to 360k versus the 278 I paid in 2021. So I'd be paying more for less square footage, in the right place. I'm still on the building-a-list side of things, so I'm not moving until the math pencils somewhere reasonable, but I keep coming back to the fact that I underestimated how much the neighborhood itself was doing for my quality of life. The square footage was a win. Everything around the house was a step sideways at best.
