by Parker

Atlanta Real Estate Market | Moving to Atlanta? | First time home buyer?

I recently had a call from a woman in New Jersey who’s planning on moving to Atlanta, and her first question was, “Is there anything to buy?”

I keep hearing that the inventory is very, very low in Atlanta. Well, the good news is, there’s still plenty of houses being sold in Atlanta. Every single month, the bad news is inventory is kind of tight. I’m going to describe the reasons why that’s happening, and if you wait till the end of this video, I’m going to tell you why I think you can still find a great house in Atlanta!!!

 

 

Inventory is tight in Atlanta for three basic reasons: the first reason is people are moving out of the big cities and they’re moving down south to the sun belt states. This actually started well before Covid. The migration patterns were: people were leaving the big cities, they needed more space, they needed more freedom, they wanted to lower their cost of living. So, they were moving out of the big cities of the north and they’re moving down to the south.

You can see this chart from Wikipedia showing the domestic migration patterns 2018 to 2019. The sunbelt states are all gaining population, and the high cost of living states like New York and New Jersey and California are losing big numbers of people. Add to that, millennials have delayed purchasing homes, and many of them are entering the home buying market for the first time.

So, with the migration patterns and the entrance of millennials into the home buying market, all of those things have really worked to make demand sky high in Atlanta.

Reason number two:  the pandemic took the existing migration trend out of the big cities, and really stepped on the gas. That may have been fine, but at the same time demand was skyrocketing, supply was also falling. Let me tell you why:  imagine this if you’re a homeowner, and you’re considering selling. You might think, wow there’s all this excess demand, it’s a great time to sell, I can get top dollar for my house! But the reality is, you have to have some other place to go. If you sell your house now, and you want to move to North Georgia and retire in the mountains, that’s fine because there’s unlimited amounts of land in North Georgia. If you sell your house and your goal was to move down to Florida maybe a retirement community in Orlando, demand down there is sky high, it’s even worse than Atlanta.

So if you sell your house you’ve got to have some place to go, and in a pandemic environment, it might actually make sense to stay put for a while. So oddly enough, some of the excess buyer demand in Florida may be leading to the reduced supply of houses available in Atlanta.

Another aspect of this is just basic human nature. In times that are unsettled, people want to hold on to what they have. They want to have a little bit more stability, so they’re delaying the big changes like selling their house and moving somewhere else. Fortunately, life goes on.

Certain unavoidable life changes – you get a new job, you get relocated to a new city, you have to sell your house! Some people are living in a small house – they have children, they need to move to a bigger house! Some people are downsizing because their children are all off at college. Some people go into a retirement home. So life goes on – it’s just been kind of set off kilter by the pandemic.

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The third reason for tight inventory in Atlanta is the historically low interest rates. Interest rates have been very, very low for the last year and a half, two years now, and for a certain period of time last year they were just insanely low – like two and a half percent. You know nobody’s ever seen that.

That’s brought a lot of people into the home buying market that normally would not be buying a home, and so it’s created a lot of excess demand. Fortunately, the rates ticked up about a half a point a few weeks ago, and I think that’s going to just cool things off a bit, take some marginal home buyers out of the market, and reduce the demand.

The good news is that home prices in Atlanta were only up about 10% in the year 2020. That sounds like a lot but, the national average was closer to 15%, so Atlanta took a bump, but it’s not as big as many of the other places in the country.

The cost of living in Atlanta is also lower than many other big cities so, if you’re moving here from out of state, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised how much house you can afford.

You know, one of the reasons I think you’ll still be able to find a great house in Atlanta is that Atlanta is very large. It’s very spread out – there are no geographic boundaries that constrain the size of Atlanta. It’s not a tiny island where only a few houses can be built – there are literally hundreds of thousands of houses in Atlanta. The highest demand areas are inside the perimeter, so a lot of the communities outside the perimeter such as Tucker, Lawrenceville and Lilburn are much more affordable.

So i’ll say this – there’s a good home for you in Atlanta if you’re interested in moving here. There again are hundreds of thousands of houses here – there are communities all over the city where you can find affordable houses, and it’s really about finding a home that fits your lifestyle and your budget. So, despite all the craziness over the last year, I think you can still find an affordable house in Atlanta. I hope this has been helpful! If you’re thinking about making the move here give me a call!

in Uncategorized
 by Parker

The Best Place to Live in Georgia

Our local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, recently ran an article about the best place to live in the state of Georgia.

According to the article, each year, data research website Niche ranks the best places to live in the United States.

The ranking provides a comprehensive assessment of the overall livability of an area, taking into account location, quality of local schools, crime rates, housing trends, employment statistics and access to amenities. In an attempt to measure the overall quality of an area in Georgia, Decatur came out on top with an A+ overall rating.

 

 

 

The city of Decatur was originally incorporated in 1823, and it’s about six miles east of downtown Atlanta. It’s a great place to live if you work in downtown Atlanta, because you never have to get on the highway to get downtown, and you can just take Dekalb Avenue.

The city of Decatur is a very charming area of Atlanta. It has beautiful architecture. Most of the homes are Craftsman bungalow style – a lot of Victorian houses as well.

It’s close to Agnes Scott University and there’s a beautiful little downtown filled with restaurants and shops, and access to Marta, which is our local subway. And another plus for the city of Decatur is it’s got terrific schools. They’re actually some of the best in Atlanta.

Due to the high demand for the city of Decatur, and the relatively small geographic area that it covers, prices are quite high for the Atlanta area. To move into the city of Decatur in this current market, you’re looking at spending about $500,000 on maybe about a 1,000 square feet, and that house is probably not going to be updated.

The demand is extremely high there. Most houses in Decatur are going to be $500k+. Many of them are going to go for over $1 million.

Many of the people who want to live in the city of Decatur (people who work at children’s healthcare or Emory or the cdc) find that they’re actually priced out of that market. They can’t buy as much houses they need, given those current prices.

Many people who are priced out of the city of Decatur area start looking in the North Decatur area, which is obviously right next to that and they find much better home values.

North Decatur, which includes the 30329, 3003 and 30345 zip codes, has a lot of the positives of the city of Decatur, with a more accessible price point.

Also, speaking about accessibility, the North Decatur area is actually more accessible to the rest of Atlanta. It’s right off a major highway: I-85, but you can get to areas like Buckhead, Virginia Highlands and Midtown without ever getting on the highway.

One of the negatives about city of Decatur is that due to its location, it adds about 20 minutes onto any trip within the city (Atlanta), other than going into downtown Atlanta.

Now, North Decatur does not have the charming bungalows and Victorian homes like the city of Decatur, but it does have some spectacular mid-century modern homes. There are many straightforward brick ranches, but there are a lot of pockets of really cool high style mid-century homes.

In fact there’s a whole neighborhood called Amberwood that is the best example of mid-century architecture in Atlanta. When the neighborhood was built, it was required that each home be unique and designed by an architect. Robert Green, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed several Amberwood homes.

Okay, so let’s talk about the North Decatur home market right now. The median sales price is around $460k which means that half of the homes are below $460k and half of them are above $460k. A one bedroom one bath condo will run you anywhere from about $150 to $180k. A typical three bedroom two bath 1960s ranch or split level type home, you can find for as low as $400k. A very nicely renovated ranch or split level home is going to be anywhere from $500,000 and up. The most expensive home on the market right now in this area is a $2.3 million dollar home, which is seven bedrooms and five baths and it’s a brand new build.

I live in North Decatur because I think it’s great and I think you will too! So if you’re thinking about moving to Atlanta and you’re going to be working for Emory University, Emory Hospital Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta or the CDC you really need to take a look at the North Decatur area it’s extremely convenient to all those locations we’ve got some some of the best restaurants in Atlanta. We have fantastic schools – it’s just a great community filled with great people and I think you’re going to love it!

So if you’re considering moving to Atlanta think about moving to the best place in Georgia.

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