{ February 18th, 2011 }
Breaking: Wall St. Journal Cites “Big Real Estate Opportunities” In Atlanta
Browsing through today’s Wall Street Journal, I came across this little nugget regarding real estate investing:
“… big opportunities may lie in less obvious places. Take Atlanta, where home prices are down 26% from their peak, according to S&P/Case-Shiller. On the surface, Atlanta looks like one of the weakest regions, with inventory of about 5,000 finished vacant homes, or six months of supply, Metrostudy says.
If you're looking for new construction in Atlanta, you'll be hard pressed to find it.
Yet the picture is changing quickly in the Peach State. Indeed, the inventory of finished vacant homes fell by 36% in Atlanta last year, more than in any other major region tracked by Metrostudy.
What could help clear further supply? One driver is job growth. After two years of vicious job losses, Atlanta’s private-sector employment reached a low in January 2010, and the private sector has since added 35,000 jobs, according to the Department of Labor.
Georgia has also accounted for a large share of U.S. population growth over time. Census data show the state’s population grew 20% between July 2000 and July 2010, twice the rate of the entire country. Another sign that trend remains in place is data from moving companies, reflecting inbound traffic to the state. Last year, 3.4% of Allied Van Lines’ traffic went to Georgia, ranking it the country’s eighth-most-popular destination.”
