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Atlanta Scores High When It Comes To Low Home Prices

March 6th, 2015

Atlanta ranks near the top of the list of U.S. cities when it comes to affordable home prices.

The Atlanta Regional Commission released a new report recently crediting the low median cost of housing for attracting “more than a million new residents to the region over the last decade.”

Among the top 25 largest metro areas, only St. Louis, Missouri, and Tampa, Florida, are more affordable, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median cost of a home in metro Atlanta in the third quarter of 2014 was $167,500, lower than Houston and Dallas, Texas, or Charlotte, North Carolina, the group said.

But when transportation is factored into the equation, the numbers suddenly take a drastic turn – making Atlanta “one of the least affordable large metro areas for moderate income families,” according to Mike Alexander, the head of research for the Atlanta Regional Commission, or ARC.

A single family household should spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs and just over 20 percent on transportation costs, equaling about 50 percent of their income. When transportation costs are factored in, an average middle class family in metro Atlanta is spending almost 63 percent of their income on the two necessities, Alexander said.

Spending ”more than 53 percent on housing means a disproportional impact on disposable income,” Alexander said.

These numbers may not seem important, but they are.

”Everybody needs to have the best information to maximize these kinds of decisions involving housing and transportation costs,” Alexander said in an interview with WABE.

Mike Alexander appeared on WABE’s ”A Closer Look” on Friday.