Atlanta trails only Detroit, Las Vegas as emptiest cities

If that’s an echo you hear, you’re not alone. Metro Atlanta is among the nation’s leaders in vacant rental units and single-family homes, according to new Census Bureau data.

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PAUL DONSKY / pdonsky@ajc.com

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It’s the third emptiest metro area in America, behind only Las Vegas and Detroit, a Forbes.com ranking says.

Overbuilding, foreclosures and the sheer size of the Atlanta metropolitan statistical area — 28 counties — have all pushed Atlanta close to the top.

“Our housing stock in Atlanta right now appears to be very soft in the sense of demand,” said Frank Alexander, a real estate law expert who teaches at Emory University. “It continues to drive down rental rates and home prices. The softness is good for buyers and renters but it is bad news for sellers.”

Dan Reuter, chief of the land use division at the Atlanta Regional Commission, says the empty-space ranking reflects foreclosure and overdevelopment problems.

The number of properties scheduled for foreclosure sales this month hit a record level. And “there’s no way it’s slowing down,” said Mark Sulimirski, chief operating officer at Equity Depot, which tracks foreclosures.

Jim Grissett, an adjunct professor at Emory and investment adviser who specializes in real estate, said, “I fear the problem that we do have is the condo market — overinvestment in the market.”

Intown Atlanta had more than 6,000 new unsold condo units at the end of 2008, and only 645 new units sold the entire year, Haddow & Co. says.

Grissett said the 28-county Atlanta area that the census measures is so vast “we’re combining urban condo, suburban, exurban, and then we’re also picking up the second-home markets around Lake Oconee and Lake Lanier. We’re picking up a lot of different markets.”

The Census Bureau uses small samples for its quarterly reports; in Atlanta that’s a little more than 1,000 homes. The sampling shows that 16.1 percent of the area’s rental units and 4.3 percent of its non-rental homes are vacant, so Atlanta ranks as America’s third emptiest city, Forbes.com says.

But the stats do not mean people are leaving the Atlanta area, local experts say. Instead, more Atlantans are probably sharing homes.

“We’ve been showing increases in population,” Alexander said. “What this [new data] tells me is the population is moving into units with other people. We’re increasing density.”

As the economy stabilizes, Alexander said, demand should rebound quickly, unlike in No. 2 Detroit, where population has been steadily declining.