The biggest issue for us when we were looking to buy a house in the area we wanted were you only had a few choices.
Buy an older cheaper smaller house from the relatively few people who were living in the city before the county started growing. But then you have an old house in an area where there is a rapid expansion of new homes. No one is going to buy a house that would be 40 years old if we did decide to sell in 10 years when they could buy a much newer home. [1]
Buy a smaller condo closer to shops and businesses. But those were more expensive with less space, with the risk of random assessments based on repairs that might come up and we would still lack the benefits of individual housing. Not to mention the higher HOA dues.
From the builders perspective, it doesn’t make sense to build, smaller slightly more affordable homes once you take all of the fixed costs into account. Our house was I believe the smallest floor plan available and we still had 3100 square feet - not bragging it was less than $350. Any halfway competent developer in Atlanta could afford it. This is a well known issue for why new affordable homes aren’t being built.
[1] Also in our case, we weren’t comfortable living in the older parts of the county. We live in a part of Atlanta that made national news as being a “sundown town” as recently as 35 years ago (it was on Oprah in the 80s). But with the influx of a younger demographic the character has changed a lot.
The biggest issue for us when we were looking to buy a house in the area we wanted were you only had a few choices.
Buy an older cheaper smaller house from the relatively few people who were living in the city before the county started growing. But then you have an old house in an area where there is a rapid expansion of new homes. No one is going to buy a house that would be 40 years old if we did decide to sell in 10 years when they could buy a much newer home. [1]
Buy a smaller condo closer to shops and businesses. But those were more expensive with less space, with the risk of random assessments based on repairs that might come up and we would still lack the benefits of individual housing. Not to mention the higher HOA dues.
From the builders perspective, it doesn’t make sense to build, smaller slightly more affordable homes once you take all of the fixed costs into account. Our house was I believe the smallest floor plan available and we still had 3100 square feet - not bragging it was less than $350. Any halfway competent developer in Atlanta could afford it. This is a well known issue for why new affordable homes aren’t being built.
[1] Also in our case, we weren’t comfortable living in the older parts of the county. We live in a part of Atlanta that made national news as being a “sundown town” as recently as 35 years ago (it was on Oprah in the 80s). But with the influx of a younger demographic the character has changed a lot.