Why there are a lot more homes for sale in metro Atlanta this spring

Memories of the rampant bidding wars that swept across Atlanta amid the COVID-19 pandemic remain fresh in the minds of wannabe homebuyers and sellers.

All-cash offers, waived inspections, homes under contract before “for sale” signs could be planted in lawns — the unprecedented frenzy that took place in 2021 and early 2022 still colors perceptions of Atlanta’s housing market.

The fervor was unlike anything Tom LeCain had seen before. An associate broker with AlpharettaZen Expert Home Advisors, he said the pandemic housing crunch warped the perception of the normal homebuying process.

Even though a lot has changed in the past three years, LeCain said it’s left some Georgians, particularly sellers, stuck in the past.

“There are some sellers still that do have a bit of unrealistic expectations,” he said. “They think they’re going to get (above-asking price) numbers, and when it doesn’t happen in the time frame that they expected, they get pretty disappointed.”

Home sales in April dipped 4% compared to the same month a year ago.

Metro Atlanta ended April with about 4.6 months worth of housing inventory, a measurement of how many homes are listed for sale, according to data from the Georgia Multiple Listing Service. That’s 50% higher than a year ago.

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The 12-county metro Atlanta area remains primarily a seller’s market on paper. But that imbalance has slowly been shifting in buyers’ favor.

While experts consider six months of inventory to be an even playing field for buyers and sellers, the market was “anemic” in early 2022 at the height of the pandemic homebuying frenzy, Georgia MLS Chief Marketing Officer John Ryan said. At several points in 2021 and 2022, the listings number had fallen below one month of sales.

When so few homes are on the market, bidding wars break out and prices are pushed up. The median sales price for homes in the Atlanta area jumped more than 20% from April 2021 to April 2022, according to Georgia MLS.

“The market has moderated from the frenzied sell side,” Ryan said of today’s housing market. “Buyers now have a little bit more negotiating power.”

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

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For some sellers, that shift has placed them on their back heels. Roughly 62% of all metro Atlanta home sales in the first quarter of 2025 involved sellers offering concessions to seal the deal, which real estate brokerage firm Redfin found was one of the highest rates in the country.

Kristen Jones, owner of Re/Max Around Atlanta, said the market has returned closer to prepandemic norms, meaning buyers likely won’t throw caution to the wind to prevail in bidding wars like in years past.

“It’s normal for buyers to want to inspect the property, to have it appraised to make sure that they know what they’re buying,” she said. “During the pandemic when rates were so low and everything was just pandemonium, they weren’t doing that.”

‘Lock-in effect’

The housing market is a seasonal business, slowing for hibernation in the winter before reawakening each spring. This year has been no different.

A little more than 5,000 homes were sold last month in the 12-county metro, according to Georgia MLS.

In high-quality school zones, it can be tough for buyers to stave off competition, said Pam Gebhardt, an associate broker with Re/Max Around Atlanta.

“The sellers are still in control, mainly because people are gravitated to particular schools, especially in the spring market,” said Gebhardt, who primarily works along the Ga. 400 corridor and north Fulton.

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Bill Adams, president of Adams Realtors, sees similar trends in Atlanta‘s competitive intown neighborhoods.

As the real estate cliche goes, it’s all about “location, location, location,” and intown enclaves sought after for their schools, walkability and neighborhood appeal are still tough for buyers to enter.

“The supply and demand is completely out of whack in town,” he said. “There’s way more people looking for property than there are properties for sale because it’s a constrained market.”

Real estate brokers say the wistful hope that interest rates will return to the pandemic’s historic lows are keeping homeowners in place. Often called the “lock-in effect,” owners who secured an interest rate below 4% are hesitant to make a change because average rates have been stuck north of 6% since late 2022, following the homebuying frenzy.

As of May 8, the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage in the U.S. was just shy of 6.8%.

“Unless somebody is forced to move — forced like getting transferred or something unusual — the lock-in effect is still a big factor,” Gebhardt said. “They know that they’re not going to get a better loan.”

Those historic-low interest rates might never come again.

“People have come to realize that they can’t sit on the bench forever if their home or their current living situation doesn’t fit their lifestyle any longer,” Jones said. “It’s mostly a matter of time, since you can only wait so long.”

Brewing uncertainty

Experts say timing the market with a home purchase is a difficult task, especially since buying a house is usually most people’s biggest purchase.

As a result, buyers tend to be sensitive to changing economic times.

“It doesn’t take much for a buyer to hit pause,” said LeCain, the Alpharetta broker.

He and other brokers said the fast-changing tariff environment — and the economic uncertainty it spurred — has weakened buyer sentiment, which places additional pressure on sellers trying to close a deal.

Adams said it’s too soon to tell whether tariff-related economic anxiety has disrupted any home sales, but he said trade wars are an “existential threat.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez

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John Hunt, chief analyst for Southeast-focused data firm MarketNSight, said tariffs on construction materials will likely impact home renovations and new projects before hitting the market for existing homes.

“Builders might blink first, because right now I’m not seeing the negative on the sales side,” Hunt said. “But there are rumblings.”

Even though the Atlanta area’s housing inventory has improved, Hunt said the country has faced a huge housing shortage since the Great Recession of 2007-09 virtually halted all construction. Despite a growing population, homebuilding has yet to keep up, so Hunt doesn’t expect macroeconomic headwinds to derail homebuying activity.

Adams also said the current situation is unlikely to replicate the aftermath of the Great Recession, which saw home values plummet and foreclosures spike.

“With the whole (Great Recession) meltdown, the brakes just hit. It was like a brick wall, and things just stopped completely,” Adams said. “I don’t see that happening this time.”