Atlanta Housing Forecast for 2019: Outperforming the National Average?

A recent forecast predicted that the housing market in Atlanta will see bigger home-price gains in 2019, compared to the national average for that same period. A separate report predicted that, while home prices in Atlanta will rise more slowly in 2019, they’ll continue to climb faster than most cities across the U.S.

Cities Get a Boost from Being on Amazon’s Short List

A December 2018 press release from Zillow predicted that: “A handful of metro areas that spent the past year competing for Amazon’s second headquarters – including Washington, D.C., one of the winners – are expected to see their home-value growth outpace the nation in the coming year.”

Amazon was considering a number of cities to be the home of their next headquarters, and they ended up choosing two locations. They’ll be developing a second and third headquarters location in New York’s Long Island City and in Arlington, Virginia.

Atlanta, Georgia was also under consideration, and for a while there many were predicting that Amazon would set up its “HQ2” in the capital and most populous city of Georgia. But it didn’t pan out that way.

Still, the economists at Zillow believe that Atlanta — and other cities that were in the running but weren’t selected — could see a bump in economic activity.

“Amazon ultimately selected two of the country’s most prominent hubs of commerce for their second and third headquarters, but many of the candidate cities that were not ultimately selected could see spillover gains in 2019,” said Zillow senior economist Aaron Terrazas. 

The idea is that other companies will recognize the potential value of setting up shop in those short-listed cities, and that this will be a jobs creator going forward. It could also lead to bigger home-price gains, according to the report.

Atlanta Gets Bold Housing Market Forecast for 2019

This was all part of Zillow’s “Home Price Expectation Survey” for the fourth quarter of 2018. In that survey, they asked more than 100 real estate economists and investment gurus to make some predictions about the U.S. housing market in 2019.

Survey participants were also asked to choose three real estate markets that they felt were “most likely to outperform the U.S.” in 2019.

Topping that list were:

1. Dallas, Texas
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Atlanta, Georgia

Home prices in Atlanta rose by around 13% over the past year or so, according to Zillow’s data. In the U.S. as a whole, they rose by an average of 7.7% during that same period. So clearly, the Atlanta real estate market outperformed the national average during 2018 — as it’s expected to do in 2019.

MetroDepth Report Predicts Steady Home-Price Gains

A separate report published by MetroDepth on January 1st predicts that home prices in Atlanta will rise more slowly in 2019 than they did in 2018, but that the city will continue to outpace the national average.

So here we have at least two sources predicting that Atlanta will be one of the hot housing markets in 2019, at least in terms of annual home-price appreciation.

The MetroDepth report also pointed out that 2019 could be a good year for buyers in the Atlanta area, due to a number of factors. Housing inventory in the area (i.e., the number of homes listed for sale) has risen over the past year, so buyers could have more properties to choose from in 2019.

Additionally, we are starting 2019 with 30-year mortgage rates averaging around 4.55%, which is only half a percentage higher than where they were at the start of 2018. Buyers who get a head start on their house hunting in 2019 might still take advantage of those historically low rates.

Disclaimer: This article contains forecasts and predictions for the Atlanta real estate market in 2019, which were provided by third-party sources. The Home Buying Institute does not make claims or assertions about future economic conditions. Housing-related forecasts should be viewed as the equivalent of an educated guess and not financial advice.