Metro Atlanta population growth slows slightly amid tight housing, study says

While metro Atlanta is adding thousands of new residents, population growth is slowing, hampered by housing supply, a new study found.

The 11-county metro added 53,690 residents between April 2025 and April 2026 — the slowest pace of population growth in more than a dozen years, according to a report released Wednesday by the Atlanta Regional Commission, the metro area’s planning agency.

Over that period, the area grew at a rate of 1%, which is down slightly from a 1.2% increase the previous year. It is the slowest rate of growth since 2012 to 2013, when the region had a growth rate of 0.96%.

The region’s population now sits at more than 5.3 million.

The indicator used to produce the figures was building permit activity. Last year, 24,015 residential building permits were issued across the 11-county metro, a more than 18% decline from the prior year.

“Housing is acting as a brake on our growth,” Ann Carpenter, ARC’s chief research and innovation officer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Housing affordability used to be really a motivating factor for people to move here, and it is a little less so today,” she said, noting that the region’s phenomenal rates of growth in the 1990s and early 2000s were driven by the affordability of the region’s housing stock and cost of living.

Even last year, higher housing costs and stagnant transit infrastructure had begun to ring alarm bells over whether metro Atlanta’s rise had its limits.

Housing affordability was the top concern for metro Atlanta residents in 2025, topping traffic, crime and the economy as the biggest problem facing the region, according to an ARC survey.

Atlanta was recently among six high-growth metro areas where new housing did not necessarily translate into more affordable housing for low-income renters, according to the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law.

Despite the decreased building permits and slower growth over the past year, each county in ARC’s jurisdiction still increased its population, with Fulton (including the city of Atlanta), Forsyth and Henry counties seeing the highest rates of growth.

The reasons behind those three areas of growth had to do with development, Carpenter explained. The outlying counties have more available, affordable land to be developed while Fulton is seeing increased building activity in areas around the Beltline and Midtown Atlanta, as well as in Sandy Springs and College Park, she said.

“Metro Atlanta continues to grow and thrive,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who is also ARC’s board chair, said in a written statement. “The Atlanta region is a great place to live. Our economy is diverse and dynamic. It’s a great place to put down roots and raise a family.”

Atlanta is not the only metro that has seen its growth slow recently. It’s a nationwide trend tied to lower birth rates and decreased levels of domestic migration and international immigration, according to Carpenter.

Still, these figures are a helpful planning tool for the metro’s leaders and “right now, we are focused on housing affordability as a region,” Carpenter said.