Reinvestment Fund Releases New Market Value Analysis for Atlanta Metro 

(Atlanta – December 16, 2024) – Today, Reinvestment Fund, a national Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) headquartered in Philadelphia and Atlanta, released its first Market Value Analyses (MVAs) for the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Metro Area. Reinvestment Fund works to create more equitable communities for all people through data-driven insights and has created MVAs for more than 50 cities and regions. View the Atlanta MVA HERE.  

Among the findings of the City of Atlanta MVA are that most markets across the city are unaffordable even to households earning well above the city’s median income. The MVA also shows that the city’s housing markets are not evenly distributed, with most of the strong markets found in the northern and eastern areas of the city. While investor activity can be found across all market types, homeowner sales of single-family homes to investors are most common in the weaker markets found in south and west Atlanta.  

The Atlanta Region report also uncovers the ways entrenched differences in the median incomes of residents across the five-county Atlanta metro impact housing access. The median income for Black residents is $64,755 and $67,664 for Hispanic, while for White residents it’s $97,701 and $104,922 for Asian households. As a result, virtually all the region’s housing markets are unaffordable to the median Black and Hispanic household. This means families are stretched thin trying to pay for housing and may have trouble paying for other essentials. In addition, the MVA found that while a variety of market types can be found across the region, the distressed markets, which are characterized by higher vacancy, foreclosure, and code violations, are primarily clustered in south and west Atlanta, south DeKalb, and Clayton County. Residents with a housing subsidy in the form of a voucher or dedicated unit are also concentrated in just a few of these distressed market types. The mortgage denial rate in distressed markets is twice as high as it is in the strongest markets. 

“Our Market Value Analyses for Atlanta and the surrounding counties are crucial to understanding how best to achieve housing goals in the region,” said Emily Dowdall, President of Policy Solutions at Reinvestment Fund. “This tool not only guides Reinvestment Fund’s own investments in the region but can also inform current and future policies on housing and target resources to where they be most impactful.”  

The MVA is a data-based, field-validated tool that looks into a city or region’s residential real estate market, and is informed by local stakeholders. This unique approach uses spatial and statistical analysis to create a data-driven typology of housing markets. Policymakers and civic leaders use this essential tool to guide community revitalization efforts, manage neighborhood change, and help residents access opportunity. The MVA for Atlanta identifies nine different types of residential markets across the city and nine types of markets in the five-county region, and highlights places where strategic intervention can stimulate private market activity, serve cost-burdened residents, or accomplish related policy goals.  

In addition to highlighting important information about Metro Atlanta, the MVA points to several policy interventions  that local officials and their partners can implement to address the affordability crisis and disparities, including the realignment of public subsidies with private investment and regulatory refinement to support more affordably priced housing options across the region. Based on the MVA, the Reinvestment Fund team recommends efforts to preserve existing affordable units and incentivize new affordable units in middle and stronger markets where prices and permitting activity are highest, home repair programs and strategic code enforcement in middle and more distressed markets, and targeted interventions to reduce foreclosures and curb evictions in the most distressed markets areas, along with outreach to low-income homeowners who may feel pressured to sell to investors. 

Above all, the analysis highlights the need for more equitable development across the region and for an expanded approach to affordable housing that includes the use of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) in higher opportunity markets, preservation of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH), and infill development in underutilized urban spaces. The MVA highlights that the best path toward promoting equity in housing access comes from a data-driven approach to guide targeted interventions.  

“We found that Atlanta is unaffordable for most residents, especially for Black and Hispanic residents, but we also know that there are interventions that can address these disparities,” said Dr. Sara Patenaude, Director of Policy Solutions for the Southeast at Reinvestment Fund. “This data will be crucial to creating a more equitable future for all people across Atlanta and the state of Georgia now and in the future.”  

Reinvestment Fund’s research team has conducted more than 50 MVAs for cities, counties and states across the country, in many cases regularly updating the analysis, usually every three years. Some of their notable MVA clients include Philadelphia, New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis and Dallas. This work has been used by officials to inform policies and programs that directly impact residents’ lives in the short-and-long-term. You can read more about Reinvestment Fund’s’ MVA approach here.  

To date, Reinvestment Fund has invested more than $677M across the state of Georgia including $570M across the Atlanta Metro Area, with the goal of making communities work for all residents. Reinvestment Fund’s impact has reached nearly 1,000,000 Georgians through investments in 78 organizations working in and leading education, housing, healthcare and health food programs. Additionally, Reinvestment Fund has created, rehabilitated, acquired, or preserved nearly 4,000 housing units across the state, created more than 4,400 jobs including permanent jobs and construction jobs and supported the creation and/or rehabilitation of more than 4.1M square feet of property.  

Learn more about Reinvestment Fund’s housing reasearch and analysis here.

Media Contact: media@reinvestment.com