When it comes to thinking of the American dream, a single-family, detached house is among the most quintessential elements that come to mind. However, anyone who’s spent a moment driving around the metro and observing construction trends knows that there are many more options for places to live — and live well — than a house surrounded by a grassy yard. In fact, commercial real estate services firm CBRE expects Atlanta to be a top-four market for multifamily housing in 2020.
For this Monday Mapday, we’re diving into data around multifamily housing in Atlanta and where you’re most likely to find it.
Looking at larger geographies: The 21-county area and county-level data
The chart below shows that in the 21-county area, single family, detached housing reigns supreme, forming about 71 percent of our housing stock. When it comes to multifamily housing, it appears that developers prefer to go big: Structures with 20 or more units have the highest percent share of the multifamily stock. The “Other” housing type includes mobile homes and other dwellings that don’t fit into standard categories (think: house boat).
Number of units in a structure in 21 County, 2017
Data source: ACS 2013-2017
The next chart shows housing stock composition at the county level among our 21-county metro and shows that even at the county level, the majority of our housing stock is single-family detached housing. In looking at multifamily, Fulton comes in at No. 1 with 45 percent of its housing stock designated multifamily — the closest to half of any county — and it is followed by Dekalb at 36.4 percent and Clayton at 28.1 percent.
Looking at smaller geographies: The tract-level view across the 21-county metro
The interactive map below shows the percent of multifamily housing structures by the number of units. By turning different layers on and off, we can see the following:
- Fulton (31.2 percent), DeKalb (22.2 percent), and Cobb (15.8 percent) counties had the highest percent share of multifamily housing structures with more than 10 units.
- Clayton County (10.9 percent) had the highest percent share of the multifamily housing structures with 5 to 9 units, followed by DeKalb (8.9 percent) and Fulton (8.6 percent).
- Structures above 10 units tend to cluster in incorporated cities, with the highest shares in Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb counties.