Atlanta Apt. Investment Market Hits the Skids

ATLANTA-It isn’t the sort of news local chambers of commerce like to hear, but metro Atlanta is ranked last in a 40-market list of best multifamily markets compiled annually by Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co. of San Francisco. Atlanta was 38th last year.

Rising vacancies (10.3%) and zero rent growth, along with a large construction pipeline moved Atlanta to the bottom of the list. The national rankings are based on a series of 12-month forward-looking supply and demand indicators.

Bad as the ranking sounds, the M&M report suggests it will worsen as the year progresses, predicting a year-end vacancy mark of 11.5%. The Atlanta apartment investment market won’t improve until 2004, even as employment growth is expected to bounce back to over 2% in 2003. That would translate to 43,000 new jobs on a year-over-year basis, M&M says.