Housing prices? Yes, we’re still thinking about them. Thanks to a new dataset, we are able to continue our project of building home sale pricing dashboards for the 11-county metro area.

The trend of rising housing costs, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been well established. Prices for both new and older homes have been steadily increasing in many parts of the country. In the metro Atlanta area, these home price increases have not been uniform, although the general trend bears similarities across the 11 counties.

Last summer, we embarked on a journey to build interactive web applications visualizing historic housing prices by county in the metro area. You can find the collection of blog posts (and links to the web apps) here:

This new dashboard for Cherokee County, the final dashboard in our series, leverages a statewide dataset from ATTOM Data Solutions. This rich dataset contains record-level home sales which we have aggregated to the Census tract level, with transactions dating back to January 2020.

The dashboard (built for desktop, not mobile screens) can be accessed here, and we have included a screenshot of the dashboard below. It features an expandable left-hand side panel with a toggle for the dashboard variable: total sales, median price per square foot, and median overall price. Sidebar sliders allow filtering for transaction time frame, construction vintage of the home, and city/region toggle. Outliers are excluded from the data using the modified z-score method.

Findings

Here are a few pertinent findings highlighted by the dashboard:

  • From 2020 to March of 2024:
    • 21,048 homes sold countywide;
    • the overall median sales price countywide during this time period was $369,900, while the median price per square foot was roughly $165;
    • the median sale price per square foot rose nearly 44% over this four-year period.
  • Countywide median prices are on the rise recently, with a peak median price observed in March 2024 of $452,500.
    • Unlike many other metro counties, home sale prices in Cherokee County have remained high and continued to climb in the post-Covid era.
  • Since just 2022:
    • Just over 8,000 homes have sold countywide;
    • the overall median sales price was $416,666;
    • the median sale price per square foot was roughly $194 but has fallen by 0.2%.
  • The sub-region with the most market activity since 2020 is Canton/Central Cherokee, where:
    • nearly 5,000 homes have sold;
    • the median year built of homes sold was 2005;
    • the median size of homes sold was 2,240 square feet;
    • the median overall price was $360,000, and roughly $158 per square foot;
    • home price increase has slowed very little in the post-Covid era. March 2024 median home sale price per square foot was over $200, only the second time since 2020 that the sub-region featured median sales prices to be over that mark.
  • The Woodstock/South Cherokee sub-region has seen the sharpest rise in home prices per square foot, with an increase in over 53% since 2020.

Happy data exploring, and we hope you are enjoying this series of local housing dashboards around metro Atlanta!