Cost of Living in Atlanta, Georgia 2023
Hello! If you are thinking about moving to Atlanta, you have probably wondered just how much it will cost you to live here. Will it be more affordable than where you are now? I did a cost-of-living video last year in 2022, but the cost of living now certainly isn’t the same as it was back then, so it is time for an updated video. For this video, I’m going to be primarily focusing on Atlanta, but I’ll also do a little bit of cost comparison between Atlanta and the two popular suburban counties, Cobb and Gwinnett.
I’m Tim Trevathan of Tim Trevathan Homes and Keller Williams Realty. I’ve worked with clients from all over who are moving to Atlanta and would love to hear from you and help you cut through the housing market craziness and find a great home for your family. My contact information is on the screen and please reach out however is most convenient for you!
Now, whether a city’s cost of living is expensive is all relative. If you are moving to Atlanta from rural South Georgia, Atlanta will seem very expensive. If you are moving to Atlanta from New York City or Los Angeles, Atlanta living will seem like a bargain.
So, just how much does it cost to live in Atlanta in 2023?
Home Prices. One of the biggest things we must consider is the cost of housing. Buying a home in Atlanta, like just about everywhere, is far more expensive than it was just a few years ago.
So, what will housing cost you in Atlanta? As of fall 2022, the median sales price of a single-family home in Atlanta was up 15.1% at $420,000 compared to the median sales price for the previous year to that point. For townhomes and condos, the median sales price through the first 9 months of 2022 was $325,000 which is 14.8% higher than the previous year. Those are just the median prices, and
The good news is that we are seeing inventory increasing which means that if you are a buyer, you have more options than you did a year ago! Inventory is up about 38%. We’re seeing other shifts in buyer’s favor here in Atlanta too, like homes staying on the market longer.
So, there are more homes to choose from than a year ago and less competition for them, but they will cost you a good bit more than they did last year.
HOA Fees. If you are buying a townhome or condo, you will also have an HOA fee built into your mortgage. Many single family homes come with one too. I have some bad news for you. Atlanta’s Fox 5 News recently did a report on HOAs, and found that Georgia ranked 8th in the country for the most expensive HOA fees. In fact, Georgia HOA fees averaged a whopping $211 over the national average of $286/month. So, Georgia HOA fees average $497/month, which is a lot of money to add on to your monthly mortgage payment. For the nicest townhome or condo communities in Atlanta, you could easily pay well over that per month.
Of course, the higher your HOA fees, the more and higher quality amenities you usually get, so that fee does come with some benefits to you as a homeowner.
Property Tax. So, we’ve covered the cost of buying a home and the HOA fees that come with many of those. Property tax and sales are also important figures to keep in mind when we are talking about cost of living.
The good news is that if you are moving to Atlanta from a more expensive locale, such as New York City, then you will feel like you are saving money when it comes to taxes. The bad news is that because home values have risen so dramatically the past couple of years, property taxes have started to rise as well. So, you will likely pay more, perhaps significantly more, in property taxes for your new home than the previous owner was paying just a few years ago.
Atlanta is located in Fulton County, and Fulton County homeowners paid 18% more in property taxes in 2021 than they did in 2020 and paid an average of $5,000. Fortunately for homeowners, Fulton County did decrease its general fund millage rate from 9.33 to 8.87 and thus 2022 bills were lower than 2021 bills. Property tax bills come out late in the year here, so it remains to be seen what the millage rate will be for 2023.
The City of Atlanta millage rate for 2022 was 10.23 but for 2023 will increase to 10.90, per the City’s website.
If you buy a home inside Atlanta city limits, you’ll pay both Fulton County property taxes and city property taxes. Even then, you’ll pay much less in property taxes than you would for the same home in many other states.
Sales Tax. In Fulton County, sales tax is currently 8.9%; that includes state, city, and county sales taxes. So, that $10 burger will cost you $10.89 at the register.
If you are moving here from somewhere like Delaware or New Hampshire or Oregon where there is no sales tax, that extra $0.89 will feel like a lot of money. But, compared to our Southern neighbors Tennessee and Alabama where the sales tax is over 9%, sales tax in Atlanta isn’t bad at all.
Food. You have a place to live, you’ve paid your taxes, but now you need to eat. In Atlanta, consumer prices in late 2022 were 11.7% higher than they were a year ago per the local NBC new affiliate with prices expected to remain high well into 2023. Per consumer interest website WalletHub, Atlanta unfortunately has the second worst inflation in the nation out of the 23 metro areas they studied3. In case you are curious, Phoenix ranked worse than Atlanta with consumer prices up about 13% from a year ago.
If you were spending $100 a week on groceries last year, you now need to budget $111.70 in order to buy the about same amount of food.
Utilities. Things have changed so much when it comes to cost of living in Atlanta in just the past year. In the summer of 2022, Georgia Power, which supplies the vast majority of the city’s electricity, announced it is planning to increase rates 12% over the next 3 years starting in January 2023, which means the average family will pay about $14 more a month in electricity costs or $172 more a year. Right now, state regulators have yet to approve that rate increase.
Electricity is expensive in Georgia. Our actual electricity rates are quite moderate, but our average bills rank 11th most expensive in the nation, thanks in large part to our very hot and humid summers. The average electricity bill in Atlanta is about $132 a month.
Not surprisingly, water rates have also increased over the past year and the average water bill is about $70/month. Not all homes here have natural gas, but if you do, that bill averages around $100/month in Atlanta and then internet will come in around $60/month.
So, the average utility bill in Atlanta is about $362/month if you have natural gas and $262/month if you have an only-electric home.
Of course, that is not including any sort of cable or streaming services.
Transportation. Atlanta is a very car-centric city and even if you live in the heart of Atlanta, there’s a good chance you’ll be using your vehicle a lot. Of course this figure is always subject to change at a moment’s notice and may be entirely different when you are watching this video, but at this very moment the average price of gasoline is $2.93/gallon for regular, which is actually about 20 cents less than a year ago.
Our gas prices do tend to be significantly lower than those in other parts of the country, particularly the Northeast and California. So, if you are moving here from there, you’ll probably feel much less pain at the pump.
Suburbs. So, how does the cost of living in Atlanta compare to the suburbs? Suburban life is different than living in the heart of Atlanta, but there are some great places in the Metro Atlanta suburbs and if you head to my video list after that, you’ll find several helpful videos on various cities and counties.
Two of the most popular suburban counties are Cobb County, to Atlanta’s northwest and Gwinnett County, to the east/northeast.
Housing is actually slightly more expensive in Cobb County than in Atlanta. I told you the median sales prices of a single family home as of fall 2022 was $420,000 in Atlanta. In Cobb, it was $427,126 and a townhome or condo in Cobb had a median sales price of $327,000 compared to $325,000 in Atlanta.
Over in Gwinnett, that single family home had a median sales price of $417,950 and townhomes and condos had a median sales price of $325,000. So, single family homes tend to be slightly cheaper in Gwinnett and townhomes and condos tend to cost about the same.
Cobb and Gwinnett also both have lower property taxes than Fulton County, and if you live in an unincorporated area in either county, you’ll only have to pay county taxes rather than county and city taxes like Atlanta residents, which is a definite cost savings.
Cobb and Gwinnett also both have a combined sales tax of only 6%, compared to 8.9% in Fulton. Its not much, the $10 burger will only be $10.60 in Cobb or Gwinnet instead of $10.89 in Fulton, but over time those pennies add up and can become a pretty significant cost savings in the suburbs, especially when buying big ticket items.
Gas also tends to be a bit pricier in the city than out in the suburbs.
So housing in Cobb County tends to be a bit more expensive than Atlanta but otherwise cost of living in Cobb is a little bit lower. In Gwinnet, cost of living is a little bit lower all the way around as housing tend to be less expensive than in Atlanta.
Income. Knowing the cost of living in an area is great, but whether or not life there is affordable depends on your income. Per employment website ZipRecruiter, the average annual salary in Atlanta in 2022 was $70,000 or about $34/hr. Of course, salaries vary greatly by career field and experience among other things.
Per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages and salaries increased about 5% from 2021 to 2022 in the Atlanta Metro statistical area, which is on par with the national average.
I wish I could tell you it is cheaper to live in Atlanta now than it was a year ago, but unfortunately I can’t. But, I can tell you that life is still less expensive here than it is many other places in the country. If you are interested in relocating to Atlanta, please get in touch! I would love to hear from you and talk about making Atlanta your next home.
