the preferred community

(our land as of Saturday, July 15th)

In case you don't know Baron & me, or in case you do know us & you've been living under a rock, we plan to move to Prattville in the next 3 months or so. We are building a house in Highland Ridge, and hopefully it will be finished by October-ish. Now, here's the deal. I've lived in Montgomery my entire life. I have never lived outside of the city limits. In my office, there are several employees who live in the Prattville/Millbrook area, and on those mornings when they are 30 minutes late due to a wreck on I-65, I swore to myself I would never move to Prattville. That was, of course, until we started seriously house shopping. If you have never shopped the real estate in Montgomery vs. Prattville real estate, let me give you a few reasons why you should consider The Preferred Community, as they like to call themselves.

1. We plan to have kids in the future. If you haven't noticed, the Montgomery Public School system has been struggling for awhile. I believe there are two problems for this: a) the money set aside for the schools isn't being used where it is needed most, and b) the parents are taking their "good" kids out & sending them to private schools, while the problem kids are stuck at the public schools with no positive influences for them. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. My point is that we won't be able to afford to send our kids to private school, and the Autauga County school system is a better option for us than the Montgomery County school system.
2. Wow...the prices. We looked at houses in Montgomery, and then we looked at houses in Prattville. You can get more square footage for the same price in Prattville than in the capital city. Obviously, in Montgomery you are paying for location. I have never liked the fact that you pay for location, but it is just a fact of life. Anyway, Prattville is a mere 9 miles from the capital city & you can save a bundle. We could have never afforded to build a brand new house in Montgomery (well, not with Lowder anyway) for the price we are building in Prattville. I have never lived anywhere brand new, so I am really excited about it!
3. Prattville is a growing city. I used to think of it as this little podunk town on the outskirts of Montgomery, where the poor rednecks who couldn't afford city life went to raise their grocery-store-footed children in their trailers. Not anymore. Prattville will soon be getting a new shopping center inluding Parisian & Bass Pro Shop (which I don't care about, but it will boost the economy), and another very nice shopping center that will include a Target (woo-hoo!). So, with the economy booming, real estate will also grow. This will be great when we decide to move again. I have no doubt we will get a good return on our real estate investment.
4. It's not as far as you think it is. Sure, there's the horrendous I-65 traffic, but if you can work around the rush hour schedule, it doesn't take that long to get to the Preferred Community. For example: I work just off Perry Hill Road, and I figure it is pretty much the center of Montgomery. (See my dad's post on the new Midtown Shopping Center.) I measured the distance from my office to The Waters at Waugh (because that is where we would move if we didn't go to Prattville...yeah right), and it is 14.53 miles. The distance from my office to our prospective neighborhood in Prattville? 15.14 miles. That is only a difference of 0.61 miles. So for 0.61 miles further from what is basically the center of Montgomery, we can afford to have an extra 1,300 square feet of living space. (That is assuming we could only afford about 300 square feet of the luscious Waters real estate.)
5. I think the move north will be good for me. As I mentioned before, I have never lived outside of Montgomery. I know moving to Prattville isn't like moving across the country, but who knows - maybe it will be good for me to be outside of the city limits. And everyone I know who has moved out there from Montgomery has said that they love it & would not move back. I'm looking forward to the new experience.

So those are the reasons for moving to Prattville. If you are planning to shop for a house in the near future, I hope that you will consider this growing community just up the interstate. And if you are one of those people who loves Birmingham, just think...you're about 9 miles closer if you live in Prattville. :-)