Study: Atlanta’s on track this year to pack on 10K more apartments

From downtown Decatur to Howell Mill Road and central Buckhead, Atlanta’s post-recession apartment explosion has radically changed the ITP landscape, and that gangbusters construction is continuing as the metro hustles to keep pace with a surging job market, according to a new analysis.

Metro Atlanta developers are responding to high housing demand by delivering what’s expected to be 10,381 new apartments by the end of 2019, according to a RENTCafé study.

More than half of those—5,840—are under construction or have recently arrived in the City of Atlanta itself.

Metro Atlanta’s sheer bulk of new rentals ranks sixth in the country this year, between Austin (10,783) and Los Angeles (9,768), respectively.

Citing Yardi Matrix data, RENTCafé analysts noted that, nationwide, 2019 will see a significant drop of 8 percent in new apartment deliveries. Rising construction costs and slimmer pools of skilled laborers have hindered growth, despite rising demand for housing.

Not so in metro Atlanta. Last year’s new apartment deliveries (9,630) are expected to be topped by 8 percent in 2019.

A closer look suggests Alpharetta is leading the OTP field with an expected 628 new apartments this year, while the growing Cherokee County city of Holly Springs wasn’t far behind. Marietta and Decatur, meanwhile, are both expected to release about 530 new rentals this year, per the analysis.

RENTCafé

The City of Atlanta’s expected new apartment count will actually be slightly down this year—slipping by 279 units, or basically one midsize rental community, per the study.

Nationwide, RENTCafé data show that more than 2.3 million rentals have materialized in the past decade—an apartment boom not seen since the 1980s.

The recent highpoint, thus far, was the 331,765 rentals delivered in 2017, after which construction has been slowing down nationally.