At nearly $1.2M, Old Fourth Ward remodel off Boulevard wants to set sales record

In an in-depth exploration of Atlanta’s “gentrification wave” last month, the AJC pointed out what an anomaly Old Fourth Ward has become. It’s a historic, once-downtrodden neighborhood where average home prices had exploded by more than 135 percent between 2013 and 2018—the highest spike among intown neighborhoods. Compare that with a 51 percent increase in neighboring Inman Park, or 67 percent in Cabbagetown, respectively, for context.

And just today, the New York Times published a deep dive into the complexities of Atlanta’s single-family home sales scene, where almost 26,000 houses that traded in 2018 alone went to investors.

This new listing in Old Fourth Ward could be Exhibit A for many of those points.

Recently expanded with a second story to 3,600 square feet, it’s positioned on the western side of Old Fourth Ward, between Boulevard and Central Park. Earlier this week, Southstar Real Estate Partners listed it for $1,175,000.

At that price, it’s one of just two single-family O4W houses asking north of $1.1 million at the moment, after a newer modern build hit that mark in a February sale.

But records indicate this flip is aiming to break the neighborhood’s recent single-family sales record, with the exception of Beltline-facing townhomes and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s landmark birth house (bought by the National Parks Service for $1.9 million last year), which doesn’t count.

Marketing language pegs this as Atlanta’s “most popular neighborhood,” and the renovation project as an example of stylish craftsmanship. It has four bedrooms, four full bathrooms (two half-baths), with maple hardwoods throughout and marble in the master-on-main.

The highlight is probably the covered, wraparound, elevated deck, which overlooks a backyard of what appears to be gravel, with a little gulley of river rock, smidgen of grass, and shared driveway with the neighbors.

The sticking point—for a property of this size, at this price—is the lack of garage, or any covered parking. Although a few Vespas and maybe a Prius might fit under the deck.

At $326 per square foot, the cost-size breakdown doesn’t reach the same stratosphere as a neighborhood outlier like Haus Gables, and certainly not a condo in a coveted Midtown building, but for such a large house, it isn’t exactly inexpensive, either.