Atlanta Leads the Nation in Affordable Living
By Laura Newsome
“Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a bonus room and a backyard?” Many big city transplants are incredulous about how much home they can afford in the Atlanta area. After years of trying to make their closet-sized apartments feel like home, an increasing number of big city natives are heading south to Atlanta, to houses that could swallow their old two-room apartments four and five times over.
Whether one is looking for an urban loft or a suburban castle, housing in Atlanta is simply larger and less expensive than other major cities. Without forsaking their urban roots, many transplants are finding that they can stay true to their original ideals and still save money on their house payments, taxes and just about everything else for sale in the Atlanta area.
“I would say we offer a great quality of life,” says Lewis Glenn, president of Harry Norman Realtors. “Our cost of living and cost of housing is affordable, and we have a lot of diversity and a pro-business atmosphere.” With an abundance of successful industries, from telecommunications and hospitality to finance, biotechnology and entertainment, an increasingly diverse and talented labor pool continues to make the move to Atlanta, confident they will find success in the city’s promising business atmosphere.
Although it’s unclear which came first, Atlanta’s thriving business community and the city’s affordable housing market have grown almost in tandem since the early 1990s, with this year’s new job outlook expected somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000. Home to dozens of Fortune 500 companies, big businesses continue to relocate their headquarters and employees to Atlanta because of its excellent quality of life, of which low-cost living is a major selling point.
“When we make relocation presentations to companies thinking about moving here, we don’t sell our company, we sell our city,” says Glenn. “A lot of what they are looking at is being able to provide good housing for their employees.”
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