Why so many homes for sale in northern Georgia? (Atlanta: real estate market, new home)

[katesroses]

Hello. We are looking to move to a friendly town in Georgia - have looked at Alpharetta and Decatur. I'm confused by how many homes are for sale in these areas. It seems like a LOT. I hail from Washington state where the homes go fast - is this not the case in Georgia? Are homes selling there? Is there a reason why there are so many on the market? Thanks!

[flyonpa]

I would not call Alpharetta or Decatur "Northern" Georgia... I would call them Suburban Atlanta.

There are lots of home in both markets, So there are not "Alot" given the number of home there. Alpharetta has a large number of relocation in/out that put additional home on the market as corporations move people around.

I would suggest the Atlanta forum for those two areas:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/atlanta/

[Clayton white guy]

Alpharetta and Decatur are "technically" North Georgia, but are DEFINITELY in the heart of "Metro Atlanta" (Decatur, incorporated and unincorporated are "Atlanta adjacent"; Alpharetta is in the northern portion of Fulton County (the county where over two-thirds of the City of Atlanta resides). Both Decatur and Alpharetta zip codes (both have more than one) are huge and wide spread. Decatur is the "defacto" postal zone for not only the city limits of Decatur, but most of unincorporated Dekalb County. Alpharetta serves much the same way in North Fulton County with its zip codes spreading into the neighboring (and newer) cities of Johns Creek and Milton.

Technically, "North Georgia" is ANYTHING from the southside suburbs of Atlanta, through Georgia's Piedmont Region and into the Blue Ridge Mountains that anchor the northern tier of the state. In our "vernacular" however, here in Metro Atlanta, when when we say "North Georgia" we ONLY mean the Blue Ridge Mountain Region, which is REALLY "far North Georgia" in the same way that when we say "Central Georgia" we mean the City of Macon and its environs spreading out through the state's "peach belt".

[cwkimbro]

Adding to what others said....

There are 165,556 people that live in a Alpharetta postal code.

There are 167,967 people that live in a Decatur postal code.

Homes are going very quick and they are generally under-supplied right now. This is also a high-growth region where many new homes are being built.

You will also see this trend alot with Lawrenceville and Marietta among a few others.

[Clayton white guy]

Add Jonesboro zip codes in Clayton County, Fairburn zip codes in South Fulton, and McDonough zip codes in Henry County and you have three small (and sometimes very small in the case of only a little over 3,000 population Jonesboro) whose post office addresses take on vast amounts of unincorporated (and sometimes newly incorporated) areas to swell their "post office populations" to well over 100,000 people. Just a a little quirk from courtesy of the United States Postal Service. ;0)

[sedimenjerry]

What price point?
My parents listed their house on a Wednesday in June. It went online Thursday night and had a viewing Friday. They accepted the 2nd offer that Sunday. Trying to find a house was the same story. My mom would view a house after work the day it went on the market and would find out there were already one or two offers on it. It was very hard to find a house move in ready.

I've heard the more expensive homes are harder to sell but it's been a sellers market in the mid range.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by katesroses

Hello. We are looking to move to a friendly town in Georgia - have looked at Alpharetta and Decatur. I'm confused by how many homes are for sale in these areas. It seems like a LOT. I hail from Washington state where the homes go fast - is this not the case in Georgia? Are homes selling there? Is there a reason why there are so many on the market? Thanks!

There are probably many more homes on the market in Georgia than in a place like Washington state just simply because...

1) Georgia has a higher population than Washington state (...there roughly 10.3 million residents in Georgia compared to only about 7.3 million residents in Washington state) and the greater Atlanta metropolitan region has a higher population than the Puget Sound region (...there are roughly 6.5 million people in the greater Atlanta metropolitan region compared to only about 4.7 million residents in the Puget Sound region)... And more people just often means more development...

2) Heavily populated North Georgia (which in this case generally refers to the part of the state north of the Fall Line (which runs in a line roughly east-to-west through the middle of the state from Columbus to Macon to Augusta) and particularly refers to the greater 39-county Atlanta metropolitan region) more than likely has more land area to develop as a landlocked area with generally level topography that is hundreds of miles inland from the sea...

...That's while Western Washington (which includes the heavily populated Puget Sound region which includes Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and Everett and is hemmed in between the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Olympic Mountains to the west with a large inlet from the ocean in the form of Puget Sound in the middle) appears to have significantly less land area to develop than North Georgia.

Even though there may appear to be more houses on the market in North Georgia than in Western Washington, make no mistake that North Georgia is currently experiencing a hot real estate market in which desirable houses in desirable areas rarely stay on the market for more than a few days.