Atlanta's city seal includes the image of the mythological Phoenix, symbol of rising from the ashes. Anyone who is familiar with Civil War history, or has even watched Gone with the Wind, knows that Atlanta is the U.S. city with first rights to adopt the Phoenix as its emblem.
Sorry Arizona.
Atlanta continues its resurgence and is now the unofficial economic and cultural capital of the Southeast. It is the principal city in the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell Metropolitan Statistical Area, the nation's eighth most populous MSA and, according to the most recent VeroFORECAST, its predicted 7.6% rate of real estate appreciation over the next year places it 39th out of the 354 MSAs analyzed.
Eighty-two percent of Americans live in those 354 MSAs, which include a total of 1,005 counties and 13,877 ZIP codes. Nationwide, the predicted rate of property appreciation through May 31, 2019, is 4.4%.
The 7.6% figure is the average of the projected values of a single-family residence in the 29 counties that comprise the Atlanta Metro. The latest quarterly report from Veros Real Estate Solutions predicts that over the next 12 months, condos and townhomes in the Atlanta Metro will rise slightly higher, at 7.7%.
The Atlanta Metro has a modest, 2.9-month supply of homes, which has been declining. Its unemployment rate of 3.9% is in line with the national average of 3.8%. Combined with a good population growth of 15% over the last decade, real estate in this market is expected to continue to have good appreciation over the next 12 months.
In addition to these population trends, housing supply and low unemployment rate, inflation and interest rates in the region are working in favor of a strong economy that will keep employment up and incomes secure.
PROFILING ATLANTA'S METRO
In the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce's July 2017 executive profile of the Atlanta-Sandy-Springs-Roswell MSA, it put the number of people living in the Atlanta Metro at just under 5.8 million. That is 55% of Georgia's population living in about 15% of its area. The city of Atlanta, estimated at 472,522 in 2016, accounts for less than 10% of the MSA's population.
The Atlanta Metro Chamber tallies its labor force at more than 2.9 million, just over half the population, working in 160,000 businesses. Median household income in the MSA in 2015 was $60,000, about $10,000 more per year than the median household income in the city of Atlanta.
But Atlanta Metro's importance extends far beyond the borders of the state, region and even nation. The sky-high numbers of air traffic at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport are that nearly 104 million passengers pass through its gates each year. That's about 10% more than the next busiest airport, Beijing Capital, which in turn has 10% more traffic than the third busiest, Dubai International.
This not only qualifies it as the world's aviation hub, it makes it extremely attractive to Fortune 500 companies, and, as of 2017, Atlanta Metro was headquarters of 15 top corporations, including Home Depot, Coca-Cola, UPS and Delta Airlines.
