ATLANTA — Prices are up and so are interest rates, but the housing outlook in metro Atlanta is looking better.
Chris and Cassandra Morgan said when it comes to looking for a home, patience is key.
The Morgans were ready to move from their home in Smyrna to something a little bigger in a better school district for their daughter. They searched for about a year.
“I was upset with what we were seeing,” said Chris. “A lot of the quality for what I thought we were going to spend was not there.”
Then 2023 arrived. The family has found a new home in Marietta and are now packing up to move.
“It felt like everything went back on the market,” Cassandra said. “I was like, this is great. We found a lot of great options.”
The remainder of the year is bound to bring even more changes to Atlanta’s housing market.
Interest rates are up dramatically from a year ago while demand continues to outpace supply.
Michael Fischer of the Atlanta Realtors Association said while prices are up in some areas of metro-Atlanta, that’s not the case everywhere.
“We’re seeing a lot of opportunities with condos and townhomes,” said Fischer. “Inventory is creeping up a bit. More inventory means more opportunity for buyers.”
The National Association of Realtors rates metro-Atlanta as one of 2023’s most affordable places to buy a home in the nation. The inventory level is growing faster here than most metro areas while the job market means more people here can afford a home.
Rohan Ganduri, a professor of finance at Emory University, said the rising cost of rent has made buying a home more attractive than it was a year ago.
He explained that the key is researching areas where you might want to live.
“Go to Zillow.com and look up a zip code and see how house prices and rental prices are trending over time,” Ganduri said. “One can also look at how property taxes are trending in a certain area.”
It took the Morgan family a year of research.
“Do the legwork ahead of time,” said Chris. “Have that patience.”
That’s how they navigated an ever changing housing market that’s bound to change even more in 2023.