Know before you go
- Decatur covers 4.60 square miles and had an estimated 25,276 residents in July 2025.
- City Schools of Decatur serves about 5,300 students who live inside the city.
- In 2026 a Decatur address carries 44.695 mills in total, including 20.300 for city schools.
Decatur sits just east of Atlanta, and visitors often assume it is a neighborhood of the bigger city. It is not. Decatur is a separate city in DeKalb County, with its own government, its own tax rate and its own school system. That independence shapes almost everything a newcomer will deal with, from the property tax bill to the school their children attend.
How big is Decatur?
Small. The Census Bureau puts its land area at 4.60 square miles and its population at an estimated 25,276 in July 2025, up 1.3 percent from the April 2020 base. With about 5,423 people per square mile in 2020, it is denser than the City of Atlanta. Children make up a large share of residents: 27.5 percent of people are under 18, against 16.6 percent in Atlanta.
What does it cost to live there?
Decatur’s numbers sit at the high end of the region for owners and near the middle for renters. In the Census Bureau’s 2020-2024 figures, the median value of an owner-occupied home was $701,400 and the median monthly cost for owners with a mortgage was $3,419. The median gross rent was $1,655, lower than in the City of Atlanta. The gap between those two monthly medians is $1,764, the widest among the places we compared in Rent vs Buy in Metro Atlanta: What the Census Numbers and Georgia Rules Say.
| Measure (2020-2024) | Decatur | DeKalb County |
|---|---|---|
| Median home value | $701,400 | $357,800 |
| Owner cost with a mortgage | $3,419 | $1,979 |
| Median gross rent | $1,655 | $1,692 |
| Owner-occupied rate | 63.9% | 58.8% |
| Median household income | $139,397 | $80,644 |
| Same house one year earlier | 86.8% | 85.9% |
Median value divided by median household income comes to about 5.0 in Decatur and 4.4 in DeKalb County as a whole. Both ratios say the same thing in different words: for many households, renting in Decatur is easier to reach than buying there.
Who runs the schools?
City Schools of Decatur is its own district. The district says it supports approximately 5,300 students living within the city’s four-square-mile area. The DeKalb County School District does not serve Decatur addresses, and the DeKalb rate sheet shows no county school levy for the Decatur tax district. Instead, the city’s school tax appears on the city’s side of the bill. How independent city systems fit into the metro is explained in Atlanta-Area School Districts Explained: County Systems, City Systems and Your Tax Bill.
How is a Decatur tax bill built?
The DeKalb County Tax Commissioner’s 2026 sheet, revised July 15, 2026, lists Decatur as tax district 92. The county portion totals 11.425 mills, made up of general operations, hospitals and a small police levy. The City of Decatur portion totals 33.270 mills: 11.200 for city operations, 1.770 for city bonds and 20.300 for city schools. Together that is 44.695 mills.
- County general operations: 10.684
- Hospitals: 0.702
- Police: 0.039
- City operations: 11.200
- City bonds: 1.770
- City schools: 20.300
Georgia generally applies millage to 40 percent of fair market value, and homestead exemptions reduce the taxable amount for owner-occupants. The City of Decatur sets its own exemptions, and we have not quoted them here; check with the city and the DeKalb tax commissioner before estimating a bill. The general rules are in The Georgia Homestead Exemption for Atlanta-Area Buyers: Who Qualifies and How It Floats.
Tip: Compare Decatur’s total of 44.695 mills with the 44.090 mills of unincorporated DeKalb. The totals are close, but in Decatur most of the money goes to the city and its schools rather than to the county.
Can you get around without a car?
Partly. MARTA’s Decatur station is on the Blue Line, below the city’s public square, and MARTA lists the average trip from Decatur station to the airport at 29 minutes. Nearby East Lake shows 27 minutes and Avondale 31. The Census Bureau’s mean commute for Decatur residents is 25.9 minutes, one of the shorter figures in the metro. A one-way fare is $2.50, with up to four transfers in three hours.
Who tends to live there?
The Census figures describe a highly educated, settled city: 76.3 percent of adults 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree, and 86.8 percent of residents lived in the same house a year earlier. The owner-occupied rate is 63.9 percent, so about a third of homes are rented. Persons per household average 2.49.
Key takeaways
- Decatur is a separate city in DeKalb County, not part of Atlanta.
- City Schools of Decatur serves students living inside the city; city school taxes are on the city side of the bill.
- The 2026 total for a Decatur address is 44.695 mills before exemptions.
- Home values are among the highest in the metro, while rents sit near the regional middle.
If Decatur’s prices are out of reach, the comparisons in Where to Live in Metro Atlanta: Comparing Cities and Counties by Cost, Commute and Taxes show where values are lower across the region.