Burns Housing Research · Independent market fieldnotes
Atlanta · Issue 01 · 12 Nov 2026

The Atlanta housing pulse

Home values cool.
Rents keep climbing.

Atlanta’s public indicators show a split market: modeled home values eased over the year while asking rents rose. Construction authorizations remain substantial, and payroll jobs edged down.

A read of the market, with the seams showing.Measures come from different providers and periods. Each chart names its geography, date and definition so the comparison stays honest.
Data refreshed · Charts are drawn from the project’s local panel
01 / Price and rent

Values and rents take different paths.

Compare matched year-over-year changes through Sep 2026. Bars start at zero and use the same scale within each measure.

Home values

Zillow ZHVI · middle tier · seasonally adjusted · 2025 to 2026

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Asking rents

Zillow ZORI · rental-stock weighted · 2025 to 2026

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What this does not say: ZHVI is a modeled typical home value, not a sale-price median. ZORI reflects listed rents, not what all tenants pay. Neither is a full measure of affordability or market clearing.
02 / The longer arc

One scale makes metro paths easier to compare.

Each Zillow series is indexed to January 2020 = 100. This removes the dollar scale so the metro paths can be compared. Focus the endpoints for the latest index values.

Base: Jan 2020 = 100ZHVI methodology updated in 2023

Source: Zillow Research. Zillow’s ZHVI methodology changed with its January 2023 release, so the earlier portion of the home-value path should be read with that break in mind. ZORI remains a listed-rent measure.

03 / New supply

Most Atlanta permits are single-family, but apartments matter.

2025 residential units authorized by building permits. Structure mix is shown within each metro. These are authorizations, not starts, completions or net additions to occupied homes.

Authorized units by structure

Census BPS · calendar 2025 · CBSA geography

1 unit2 units3–4 units5+ units

Permits relative to households

2025 authorizations per 1,000 households · ACS households are 2025 estimates

i

Household-normalized permits adjust for market size, but are not a construction “adequacy” target.

Census currently publishes newer monthly CBSA estimates; this pipeline uses the latest common annual file available.

04 / Rental pressure

Rent alone misses the bargaining conditions.

New-lease rents, vacancy, time on market and concessions describe different parts of the rental market. Values use Apartment List’s Atlanta metro series, with the observation month shown for each measure.

New leases and rental conditions

Apartment List · metro-level estimates

Concessions and vacancy over time

Separate series; percentage rates on a common percentage scale

Concession shareVacancy rate

Apartment List defines its concession rate as the share of properties advertising specials equivalent to at least one free month. Vacancy estimates emphasize professionally managed properties; neither is a census of all rental units.

05 / Housing instability

Eviction filings show legal pressure, not completed moves.

ARC and Eviction Lab court-record data cover Atlanta’s five-county core. Filings can repeat for the same renter and do not measure informal displacement.

Core-county filing rate

Monthly filings per 1,000 ACS 2025 renter households · filings summed across five counties

Latest reported month

The denominator is a fixed 2025 renter-household estimate, so month-to-month movement reflects filing counts against a fixed population base. Sealed tract records may be included in the regional total but cannot be assigned to a county.

06 / Local demand

Payroll employment across Atlanta and peers.

CES total nonfarm jobs, matched Sep 2026 to the same month a year earlier. Employment measures workplace jobs, not the number of employed residents.

Payroll employment growth

BLS CES · same month in 2025 and 2026 · not seasonally adjusted

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Employment path

CES employment indexed to Jan 2021 = 100 · matched series through Sep 2026

The U.S. CES series can have a newer monthly observation; the matched local period is used here for like-month comparisons. Estimates can be revised.

07 / Household context

Household resources across the peer markets.

ACS 2025 one-year estimates add household context. The whiskers show Census-published 90% margins of error for median household income.

Median household income

ACS 2025 · dollars · estimates with 90% margin of error

Bars begin at zero; the capped lines show ± MOE, not a confidence interval for a metro comparison. Income measures total household income, not just wages.

Atlanta in five numbers

ACS 2025 one-year estimates · Atlanta MSA

Do not divide the medians and call it affordability. Median income, owner value and gross rent summarize different households and distributions. Housing-cost burden requires household-level costs matched to household income.
08 / The payment hurdle

What a purchase payment looks like under one common assumption.

A simple comparison of typical values at a common U.S. mortgage rate. It makes the rate assumption visible; it is not a quote or an affordability score.

Illustrative monthly principal + interest

20% down · 30-year fixed · Freddie Mac PMMS

Payment = loan × r × (1+r)360 / ((1+r)360 − 1); loan = 80% of Zillow typical value, monthly r = annual rate / 12.

What is outside the payment?

Local costsProperty taxes, insurance, HOA fees, maintenance, mortgage insurance and closing costs are excluded.
Borrower variationCredit score, loan size, points and down payment change the actual rate and payment.
Mixed reference datesHome values are ; the rate is the latest weekly reading in that month.
No income ratioDo not infer affordability from a representative payment without matched income and household-level costs.

Reading this report carefully

Boundaries vary. Census, BLS and Zillow metro names do not always align. FHFA reports Atlanta and Tampa as metropolitan divisions, so those HPI series are explicitly excluded from full-metro rankings.

Observation dates vary. Zillow is through ; ACS is ; permits are . FHFA HPI is quarterly and mortgage rates are weekly. Growth comparisons use matched periods.

Independent research. This is a public-data project inspired by housing research publications. It is not affiliated with or based on proprietary data from John Burns Research & Consulting.

Sources & definitions
Data retrieved . Full source registry and source files are in the project.