Atlanta Real Estate Update

The Atlanta real estate market is still suffering serious damage from the continuing effects of the economic downturn, although the low

cost of doing business in the Empire State of the South may soon boost interest in commercial real estate. According to an April 2, 2010 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Good job news flowed from Washington to suburban Atlanta on Good Friday. The Labor Department reported that in March the economy added the most new jobs in three years…Optimism has been especially hard to come by in hard-hit suburbs. The recession sundered white-collar, middle-class communities in Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton, and DeKalb Counties. The real estate industry, and its construction, landscaping, accounting and legal bedfellows, continues to suffer. Corporations in Alpharetta, Duluth, and Kennesaw laid off thousands.”

The especially hard hit Atlanta real estate market may begin looking up, although the particular effect on Atlanta homes for sale remains ambiguous. The same article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, written by Dan Chapman, continued to state that “Of course not all of the economic pain, including a 36 percent increase in suburban food stamp recipients last year, falls on the shoulders of the region’s white-collar workers. Atlanta’s sprawl created thousands of blue-collar jobs, too, particularly in the moribund real estate industry. The housing bust has wiped many of them out.” Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, said that “The recession has hit hardest those geographic areas that have seen the most new development. So the recession has been harder on the suburban fringe than the city centers.”

A March 30, 2010 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found some upbeat

news for commercial Atlanta real estate for sale, stating that “Atlanta is the second cheapest major U.S. city in which to do business, according to a study released Tuesday by KPMG…KPMB’s 2010 Competitive Alternatives study measures 26 cost factors - labor, taxes, real estate, utilities and more - over a 10-year period. Atlanta gets high marks for its cheap rents, wages, employee benefits, transportation costs and favorable corporate tax rate.”