Metro Atlanta dominates ranking of the nation’s largest apartments

Metro Atlanta has long been considered a haven for people seeking large homes, a spread-out region where a multistory suburban spread with a pool might be priced on par with a Williamsburg one-bedroom.

In fact, online mortgage service Lending Tree found recently that Atlanta’s median housing size (1,914 square feet) ranks second in the nation, behind only Houston.

When size matters, that might be impressive; but based on a new analysis, Atlanta’s apartment stock is saying, basically, “Hold my beer.”

Metro Atlanta cities claimed four of the top 10 slots in a nationwide ranking of places with the largest average apartment sizes, as compiled by search website RENTCafé and released today.

Averaging 1,025 square feet, Marietta’s apartments are the second largest in the country, behind only Tallahassee.

Both are located in the nation’s leading region for square footage (975, on average), the Southeast, per RENTCafé’s findings, which were based on Yardi Matrix data for the top apartment markets in the land.

Elsewhere locally, Decatur (1,000 square feet), Norcross (991), and the City of Atlanta itself (987) also made the top 10 for largest average flats.

Atlanta rentals might represent a relatively big bang for the monthly buck, but new apartments in the city have actually shrunk by 4 percent in the past decade, following a national trend of tighter floorplans in recent years.

Meanwhile, average rents in Atlanta have swelled by 49 percent in the same timespan—from $939 in 2008, to $1,399 in 2018, per RENTCafé’s numbers.

The study took into account data on large-scale multifamily properties of 50 units of more, in more than 130 top U.S. markets for apartments.

Surprisingly, the littlest floorplans in the country, on average, are not the stacked shoeboxes common in the northeast. Regionally speaking, that title belongs to California, where flats average 837 square feet, per the analysis.

In terms of cities, RENTCafé found that Seattle’s apartments (711 square feet, on average) are the country’s tiniest, followed by Manhattan and Chicago (both 733 square feet).

• As Apartments Are Shrinking, Seattle Tops New York with the Smallest Rentals in the U.S. [RentCafe]