Holly Flax

The show moved Holly and Michael to Colorado, because Holly’s parents were there and Holly’s parents needed her. This is the version where they retired to Georgia instead. Nothing else about her changes, because moving for the people she loves is the most Holly thing she ever did.

Holly wants somewhere friendly, quirky, welcoming, and positive, which, not coincidentally, is also a flawless description of Holly herself. There is one complication, and its name is Michael Scott, to whom she is happily married and whose taste in real estate is a matter of public record.

Holly Flax is, by a comfortable margin, the kindest and most genuinely good hearted person in this entire project, a woman so warm and goofy and decent that she managed the single most improbable feat in the whole show: she looked at Michael Scott, saw all of it, and thought, yes, that one, he’s perfect. Placing Holly is a pleasure because her needs are pure and lovely. She wants warmth. She wants a community that’s friendly and a little weird and glad to have her, somewhere positive and welcoming where good people do good things. Find the sunniest, most community minded town on the map and you’ve found Holly’s home.

Who we’re working with

Holly is an HR representative, which in her hands meant actual empathy rather than paperwork, and she is a quirky optimist to her core, ethical, sincere, and blessed with a sense of humor perfectly calibrated to Michael’s, which is to say deeply silly. She’s married to Michael now, they found their way to each other after a long detour, and her values are exactly what you’d hope: ethics, family, and positivity, stated plainly and meant completely.

Her housing profile radiates the same warmth. A comfortable family home, friendly, quirky, and welcoming. Her deal breakers are corporate feel and negative vibes, which is possibly the most Holly way to describe what she’s avoiding. Her budget is $300,000 to $400,000, combined with Michael, which is modest for a couple and speaks to Michael’s, let’s say, adventurous relationship with money. Holly isn’t chasing status or space. She’s chasing good energy and kind neighbors, and she’ll know the right place the moment it makes her smile.

Then there’s the reason they’re in Georgia at all. Her parents are older and they need her close, and Holly is the kind of person who reorganizes her whole life around that without once calling it a sacrifice. So her shortlist carries a requirement most of this site never has to weigh: good hospitals nearby, transit her parents can genuinely use, and enough slack in the budget to absorb a bad year.

The match: Clarkston

Holly and Michael land in Clarkston, which is not the town either of them named and is unmistakably the town Holly described.

Read her brief back. Friendly. Quirky. Welcoming. Positive. A place where good people do good things. Clarkston is a small city that has spent thirty years resettling people from everywhere and turning that into a town, and it gets called the most welcoming square mile in the state, which functions less as marketing copy than as a plain description of what happens there. Walk a few blocks and you pass groceries and restaurants from six countries and neighbors who arrived with nothing and were met by somebody. That is Holly’s value system standing out in the street wearing a name tag.

Her deal breakers fall over at the same time. Corporate feel: there isn’t any, there never has been, and no developer has ever come here to manufacture one. Negative vibes: this is a town whose entire civic personality is that it takes people in. Holly would walk it once, meet four people, get invited to something, and be home before dinner.

Now the money, which is where this stops being a compromise and starts being a relief. Clarkston’s median runs around $309,000, inside their range rather than past it. Decatur, her own first answer, runs around $705,000, more than double what they have. In Decatur the Scotts are stretching for the smallest old house at the edge of town. In Clarkston they’re buying a home with a room in it for her parents, which is the whole reason for the move and the thing no amount of charm on a Decatur square would have replaced.

She doesn’t lose Decatur either. It’s a short drive west, so the square, the farmers market, the book festival and the arts festival all become a Saturday rather than a mortgage. Emory Decatur Hospital sits on the way, with Emory’s main campus just past it. MARTA’s Indian Creek station is at the edge of town. Every practical thing this family needs is within a few miles of a house they can pay for.

Michael gets something out of this too, which surprised me. His guide was a tower and a doorman, and what he needed the entire time was a place small enough and dense enough to learn his name, which Clarkston does in about a month. Holly didn’t solve her housing problem and his separately. She found the one town that answers what both of them were really asking, and she found it by asking the question she always asks, which is whether the people there are kind.

The alternatives

Decatur. This is the Holly who never met Michael, and it’s a wonderful answer for her. A walkable little city built around a genuine town square, warm and progressive and community minded, full of festivals and farmers markets and independent everything, the kind of place where being a little quirky counts in your favor. It’s the town equivalent of her personality. The catch is the one that follows this couple everywhere: homes sell around $705,000, and on their number that buys the smallest, oldest house at the edge of the map with nothing left over for anything else. Alone, on a different budget, she takes it instantly.

Avondale Estates. The storybook little city sitting between Decatur and Clarkston, quirky and warm and every bit as welcoming, and the closest thing to Holly’s dream at a friendlier number than Decatur. If the Scotts’ budget ever moves, this is where it should move to. Worth pricing properly before anybody signs anything.

Stone Mountain. Cheaper still at around $284,000, diverse and unpretentious and a perfectly good life. Holly would be happy here and would make it warmer by moving in. It’s more spread out than Clarkston, though, and the spreading out is the exact thing Michael cannot survive.

The verdict

Holly lands in Clarkston, in a house that fits the money, a few miles from the hospital her parents are going to need, in the most welcoming square mile in Georgia.

The asterisk this guide used to carry is gone, and it’s gone because Holly’s list turned out to be the one that solved the marriage. Michael wanted a tower and needed to be adopted. Holly only ever wanted kind neighbors. Point her at the town that takes people in and the tower stops being the question at all. Put this genuinely good woman anywhere friendly, quirky and welcoming and she’ll make it warmer just by moving in. Clarkston barely needs the help, which is exactly why it’s hers.

Jo Bennett is next, and Jo does not have a budget so much as she has a net worth.