By Davis Rayner

Sure, it’s a nice place to visit ... With more than 1,200 homes, Horseshoe Bend, which bills itself primarily as a “premier country club community,” is one of Roswell’s largest and most well-established subdivisions.

 Located off Holcomb Bridge Road on the east side of town, the neighborhood boasts pleasant scenery and family- friendly living. With the exception of a terrible home invasion burglary last January on Steeple Point Drive, there is incredibly little crime (unless you count toilet paper-rolling, in which case you may want to buy stock in Angel Soft).

While all of Roswell suffers through a 7 percent decline in real estate market value from the previous year, Horseshoe Bend has seen only two recent foreclosure listings, which is great news, but also very few sales, specifically three reported in the previous quarter, which can only be disheartening to the would-be sellers of 46 houses currently for sale by real estate agents and the approximately dozen more for sale by the owners. Prices range from $240,000 to $1.475 million and styles from Cottage to I‘mloaded. Of the three home sales, two went for 50K and more less than their appraised value (125 Foal Drive – appraised for $280,600 but sold for $215,781; and 485 Persimmon Lane – appraised for $405,000 but sold for $355,000). Bottom Line: Hold on to your homes and weather the storm.

But would I want to live there... One of the neighborhood’s most beloved residents, Bob Carr, is also one it’s oldest (in every way). In 1976, Bob, now 79, sold his business in Rochester, N.Y., and flew down to Atlanta to visit his elder son, then a student at Emory, and to see what was available in business and real estate. “On the back page of the newspaper was a huge ad for the neighborhood,” he said. “I drove up to see it for myself.”

Then in its primary stages with few homes built, and mostly only on Sassafras, Horseshoe Bend was a wilderness with a main avenue winding through. The neighborhood sales agent, Happy Morrison, took Carr around to the home sites, including lakefront property off Wayt Road, which at that time was limited to the main street and two smaller side roads, Boxelder and Persimmon.

“When I saw this lot, I said, ‘My God, this is where my wife wants to live,’ ” Bob said. He called her on the phone and she was there the next day.

He continues: “When you came up Ga. 400, which was two lanes each way, you saw very few people. Happy took us out to Boxelder, which had two lakefront sites, one for $16,000 and one for $20,000. My wife said, ‘Bob, this is where we want to build, but for $4,000, we’ll live next door.’ “ They contracted a local builder for their three-bedroom home, spent $85,000 and moved into it in October 1978. Bob, whose wife passed away in 2001, has lived there ever since.

He has never joined the country club, nor does he use the new pedestrian trail that links the neighborhood to Fouts Road. “I don’t have the time,” he said. “I’m too busy counting my dividend checks.” But neither would he want to live anywhere else. He feels safe, not only because of the security patrolling the streets, but also because “if they’re going to break in, they’re going to break in the expensive homes like the Estates and Havenwood,” two newer sections.

Although Bob thinks the neighborhood is like any other with an 18-hole golf course, he loves the two lakes and how well-kept the grounds are, something his yearly $380 Home Owner’s Association fee helps make possible. He appreciates that residents are active and that the wide, well-planned streets make walking and jogging (but, he says, “not too much with the bicycles”) easily accessible.

His Top Three Reasons to Live in Horseshoe Bend: It’s well known (“People hear I live here and think, ‘Oh, you must be rich.‘ “), it’s quiet (“People mind their own business, but everyone is very friendly.“), and it’s clean (“You never see trash around.”