Demand for rental housing here continues to outpace supply and prices have kept rising rapidly, according to several companies tracking housing data.
Last month’s average rent in metro Atlanta was $1,488 — up 17% from the same month a year ago, twice the national average increase, according to RealPage, a Richardson, Texas-based firm that sells real estate software and analysis.
Rent growth is due to “demographic tailwinds across the board,” said Adam Couch, a RealPage market analyst.
Young people are entering the housing market, many of them with white collar salaries that have not suffered during the pandemic. Meanwhile Atlanta’s job growth has outpaced the national average since the depths of the pandemic, he said.
That was the sixth-strongest growth among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, and it was driven by high occupancy, according to RealPage.
Rent in July alone was up 3% from June, outpacing the 2.2% increase nationally.
The fastest growth was in Phoenix, where rents jumped 21.6% in the past year. Atlanta also ranked behind West Palm Beach, Las Vegas and Tampa and Jacksonville.
Rent increases typically slow down in the second half of the year, according to RealPage.
There also is more uncertainty than in a typical year, though. In addition to the pandemic, a federal ban on evictions is set to expire in early October.
Metro Atlanta, long touted for its affordability, is still far cheaper than the costliest cities in the Northeast or West Coast, but it continues to move up the ranks. Rents here are now $61 a month below the national average, according to RealPage.
Within the metro area, the city of Atlanta has the most expensive rents, averaging $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment and $2,080 for two bedrooms, according to Zumper, a San Francisco apartment listing company. Rents for a two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta were up 10% in the past year.
But the pace of increase was faster in several suburbs, including Duluth and Marietta, where rents rose 20%, according to Zumper.
Average rents, two-bedroom apartment
Atlanta: $2,080
Sandy Springs: $1,900
Alpharetta: $1,810
Smyrna: $1,620
Duluth: $1,620
Lawrenceville: $1,440
Decatur: $1,420
Marietta: $1,240
Source: Zumper
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