Henry County Housing Dashboard

We’ve got housing prices on our minds. Again.

Rising housing costs, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been well established. Prices for new and older homes alike have been steadily increasing in many parts of the country. In a June post, we showcased a new housing dashboard for Forsyth County built in the Python framework Streamlit (along with Fulton County in early August and Cobb County in late August). We have created a sister dashboard in the same style, this time for Cobb County. As before, the dashboard leverages data from the county’s Qpublic public records database which we have collected, geocoded, and aggregated to the Census tract level.

The dashboard below features an expandable left-hand side panel with data filters for transaction time frame, construction vintage of the home, and city/region. Depending on your screen size, you may need to scroll down to see the entire embedded dashboard. Darker shades of city/regions correspond to higher median sales price per square foot. In addition to the embedded dashboard below, you can access the standalone dashboard app here. We note that, as of the date of accessing the data, no 2023 sales were available on the county’s public records database.

Dashboard

Findings

Here are a few pertinent findings highlighted by the dashboard:

From 2018 to 2022:
- Just over 22,400 homes sold countywide;
- the overall median sales price countywide during this time period was $247,500;
- the median sale price per square foot rose 72.5%, although much of this increase occurred since early 2021.
Between 2021 and 2022 alone:
- Just under 10,000 homes sold countywide;
- the overall median sales price rose to just over $300,000;
- the median sale price per square foot featured a more moderate increase of just under 20%.
When viewed north-to-south, the 3D rendering of the map (toggled in the sidebar) resembles a stair step upward, indicating higher levels of home transactions in the southern portion of Henry County as compared to the northern portion, a somewhat surprising result considering the northern portion’s proximity to Atlanta.
The county features dispersed pockets of high-cost home sales, as evident by the patchwork of dark blue colors on the map.
- Considering only homes built since 2000, and only those transactions since 2020, we see Census tracts with higher prices / SF northwest and northeast of McDonough, but also a couple pockets of higher-priced homes to the southeast as well.
- Given the above parameters, the highest median price / SF can be found in a Census tract just west of I-75 in the North Henry region at $147 / SF and a total of 38 home sales.
If we only consider 2022 home sales and only homes built prior to 2000, we see more of a geographic pattern emerge across the county.
- Clearly, older homes have sold more recently for higher median prices in East Henry, with the highest median sales price being $195 / SF. However, this particular Census tract only featured 4 sales in 2022, so this relative dearth is likely skewing median values upwards.