ATLANTA — Researchers at Florida Atlantic University say Atlanta has one of the most “overpriced” housing markets in the United States.
They looked at 25 years worth of home prices across the country. Their study concluded that current housing prices in Atlanta are 58% above what they would be had they followed historic trends. That places Atlanta at No. 5 in the country, the study showed.
According to the website, researchers Ken H. Johnson, Ph.D., and Eli Beracha, Ph.D., developed a methodology to score the top 100 most overpriced or underpriced metropolitan cities in the U.S. using open-source data from Zillow or other providers.
Currently, the average price for a home in Atlanta is $367,000. That’s 20% more than the average a year ago.
Ray Hill, a professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, says it doesn’t mean Atlanta is overpriced.
“It's just part of a general insight into what's happening in the Atlanta market,” Hill said. “If you look at the top of the rankings, most of them are places that you would expect.”
Hill says as long as metro Atlanta keeps growing, the area will continue to top lists like this one.
“The economy is doing very well,” he added. “Unemployment in Georgia is below the national average. You've got lots of people moving out of the high tax states in the Northeast and California and moving to Texas and then Georgia and Florida.”
Rising interest rates will likely calm the market, but Hill says it won’t happen soon.
Pam Smith lives in a modest neighborhood where a home recently sold for more than a million dollars.
“I have friends who decided to sell cause they could sell and get a lot of money,” Smith said. “That was interesting to see cause they ended up paying more for their next house.”
Florida Atlantic’s study put Boise, Idaho, at the most “overpriced” housing market with prices 72% what they would be had they followed historic trends, followed by Austin, Texas, Ogden, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada.