Atlanta ZIP Code Affordability Report 2026

Key findings

• No Atlanta-area ZIP code is attainable at the classic 3.0 price-to-income ratio. Across 94 ZIP codes the median home value is $385,000 against a median household income of $90,934: a ratio of 4.25. The most attainable ZIP, 30038 (Lithonia South / Conyers Border), is 3.2; 31 ZIPs are above 5.0 and 32 more sit between 4 and 5.
• Intown is where the gap is widest. The 19 "Atlanta Proper" ZIPs carry a median ratio of 5.45, against 4.36 in the North Metro, 4.06 East, 4.04 South and 3.71 West. Density and price-to-income move together (r = 0.55): the closer to the core, the further the median home sits from the median paycheck.
• The most expensive ZIP is not the least affordable. 30327 (Chastain Park / Tuxedo Park) has the metro's highest median home value ($1,136,500) and highest income ($189,250), for a ratio of 6.0. The squeeze is worst in 30303 (Downtown Atlanta Core, 7.0), 30342 (Sandy Springs South, 6.7) and 30306 (Virginia-Highland / Morningside, 6.5), and in gentrifying south-west ZIPs like 30310 (West End / Adair Park, 6.4) where values have run far ahead of resident incomes.
• 8 ZIP codes are rent-burdened at the median (median rent above 30% of median income), led by 30303 at 54.1%. The rest are the city's west and south-west sides (the AUC district, Cascade Heights) and older inner suburbs on the north-east and south sides: Doraville, Norcross, Clarkston, Riverdale, Lithonia.
• Commute is the price of attainability. ZIPs with average commutes of 26 minutes or less have a median home value of $488,300 and a ratio of 5.17; ZIPs at 35 minutes or more come in at $339,800 and 3.88, with owner-occupancy of 58% versus 42%. The 12 ZIPs that pass our value screen average a 34-minute commute.
• Education explains income; unemployment explains the rest. The college-degree rate correlates with median household income at r = 0.78, and unemployment inversely at r = -0.74. The five highest-unemployment ZIPs are all on the west and south sides of the city, and four of the five have median incomes under $53,037.

How this report was built

Every figure is computed from the dataset behind the 94 ZIP code pages on this site: U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 2024 5-Year Estimates at the ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level for population, density, median household income, median home value (owner-occupied units), median gross rent, tenure, bachelor's-degree attainment, unemployment and mean travel time to work. 1 ZIP code is excluded because the ACS reports no resident population: 30301 (Downtown Atlanta (PO Box)). Walk Score, Transit Score and the crime index shown on individual ZIP pages are editorial estimates, not Census measures, and are not used anywhere in this report.

Price-to-income (PTI) is median home value divided by median household income; 3.0 is the long-run U.S. benchmark for a home the local median earner can finance conventionally, and ratios above 5.0 are conventionally described as severely unaffordable. Rent-to-income (RTI) is annualized median gross rent divided by median household income; above 30% is "cost-burdened" under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development definition. Both are area-level indicators built from ZIP-level medians, not statements about individual households. Metro medians here weight each ZIP equally, not by population. Correlations are Pearson r across the 94 ZIPs. Regions (Atlanta Proper, North, East, South and West Metro) are the site's own groupings, listed on each ZIP page. Sources, formulas and limitations are documented in full on the methodology page.

Price-to-income: a metro with no 3.0 ZIP codes left

The distribution is the headline. 31 ZIP codes sit between 3 and 4, 32 between 4 and 5, and 31 above 5 — and none at or below 3.0. For comparison, Houston, the other large Sun Belt metro this network covers, still has a majority of its ZIPs at or under 3.0. Metro Atlanta's median ZIP has crossed into the territory that coastal metros occupied a decade ago, and it has done so while median incomes ($90,934) remain solidly middle-class. This is a price story, not an income story.

The top of the table is dominated by two kinds of ZIP. The first is the intown core: 30303 (Downtown Atlanta Core), where a $265,000 median home meets a $38,000 median income — a population of roughly 6,797 that is heavily student and institutional, which makes the 7.0 ratio real but unrepresentative of who is actually buying there. The second is the established prestige belt — 30306 (Virginia-Highland), 30305 (Buckhead), 30342 (Sandy Springs South), 30307 (Candler Park) — where home values of $799,800–$829,400 sit against six-figure but not extraordinary incomes. Then there is the third, quieter group: 30310 (West End), 30312 (Grant Park / Old Fourth Ward), 30315 (South Atlanta). These are BeltLine-adjacent neighborhoods where the median home value has been repriced by new buyers while the median income still belongs to long-time residents, and their ratios (6.4, 6.4, 6.3) are the numerical signature of displacement pressure.

At the other end, thirteen of the fifteen most attainable ZIPs are suburbs, most of them 20 or more miles from Five Points: Lithonia, Conyers, Douglasville, Powder Springs, Hampton, Snellville, Kennesaw, Mableton. The one intown entry, 30326 (Buckhead South / Lenox, 3.7), gets there on a high-rise condo stock priced below what its residents earn. Owner-occupancy and price-to-income run in opposite directions across the metro (r = -0.43); the attainable ZIPs are the ones where residents own, and the stretched ZIPs are the ones where they rent.

The 15 least affordable ZIP codes by price-to-income

The 15 most attainable ZIP codes by price-to-income

Rent burden: 8 ZIP codes past the 30% line

Renting is the more forgiving side of Atlanta's ledger. The median ZIP's rent of $1,748 a month takes 23.0% of median household income, comfortably under the 30% threshold, and in the affluent north — 30327, 30005, 30075 (Roswell) — rent runs at just 13.3%–14.3% of income because incomes are so high. But 8 ZIPs cross the line. 30303 is the outlier at 54.1%, again driven by its student and institutional population. The other 7 split into two groups: the west and south-west sides of the city — 30314 (West Atlanta / AUC) and 30311 (Cascade Heights) — and the inner-ring suburbs that absorbed the metro's working-class and immigrant households as intown rents rose: 30340 (Doraville), 30083 (Stone Mountain / Clarkston), 30071 (Norcross), 30238 (Riverdale), 30058 (Lithonia). None of these has a high median rent in dollar terms; they are burdened because the median household earns $38,000–$64,515.

The commute trade: minutes for ratio points

Atlanta's affordability map is a commute map. Home value and average commute time are negatively related across the 94 ZIPs (r = -0.29), and density and price-to-income are positively related (r = 0.55). Put together: the shorter the drive and the denser the block, the more a household pays per dollar of income. The 19 ZIPs with commutes of 26 minutes or less — Downtown, Midtown, Emory, Candler Park, Grant Park, West Midtown — have a median home value of $488,300 and a median ratio of 5.17. The 31 ZIPs at 35 minutes or more — Hampton, Newnan, Loganville, Covington, McDonough, Cumming — come in at $339,800 and 3.88, and 58% of their households own versus 42% in the short-commute group.

Ten extra minutes each way buys roughly a full ratio point. That is the deal the metro is offering, and it is why the attainable ZIPs cluster along I-20 east and west, I-75 south and GA-400 north of the Perimeter rather than anywhere inside it. The regional table below makes the same point from altitude: the South Metro has the lowest home values and the longest commutes; Atlanta Proper has the shortest commutes and the highest ratio.

Shortest commutes

Longest commutes

Region and county view

By region, the North Metro is the metro's wealth engine — 33 ZIPs, 1.6 million people, a median income of $112,111 — and its ratio of 4.36 is high only because its home values ($485,500) are the metro's highest outside the core. The South Metro is the mirror image: the lowest values ($275,000), the lowest incomes ($69,796), and a ratio of 4.04 that is only marginally better than the north's. Affordability in Atlanta is not simply "go south"; it is "go far", in any direction. By county, Fulton has the highest ratio (5.06) because it contains both the intown core and Buckhead; Cobb (3.82) pairs the second-highest incomes with moderate values and is the most attainable of the big four.

By region

By county (counties with two or more ZIPs; split-county ZIPs assigned to their first-listed county)

The value screen: 12 ZIP codes

To turn the analysis into a shortlist, we screened every ZIP on three conditions at once: median household income at or above the metro median ($90,934), price-to-income at or under 4.0 (a full point looser than the national 3.0 benchmark, because no Atlanta ZIP clears 3.0), and owner-occupancy of at least 60%. 12 ZIP codes pass. They are all suburban, mostly in Cobb, Gwinnett, Cherokee, Forsyth and north Fulton, with Douglasville the lone entry to the west, and their average commute is 34 minutes. This is the corridor — East Cobb, Kennesaw and Acworth, Snellville and Loganville, Suwanee, Cumming, Woodstock, Alpharetta — where a household earning the local median can still buy the local median home without a stretch, and where the neighbors mostly own.

The screen is intentionally simple and will exclude places that are good decisions for a particular household — a single renter has no reason to care about owner-occupancy, and a remote worker can ignore the commute column entirely. As a first cut on where the numbers favor the buyer, though, it is a short list for a metro of 4.1 million people, and nothing on it is inside I-285.

Limitations and how to cite this report

• ACS 5-Year Estimates are survey-based with margins of error that grow as ZIP population shrinks; differences of a few percent between two ZIPs are not meaningful.
• Median home value is the owner's estimate from the ACS questionnaire, not a sale price. In fast-repricing ZIPs (West End, Grant Park, Summerhill) it lags the market and the true ratio is likely higher than shown.
• 30303 (Downtown) and 30314 (AUC) have large student and institutional populations that pull median income down; their ratios describe the resident population, not the buyer pool.
• ZIP-level medians describe areas, not households. A rent-to-income ratio above 30% means the typical rent is high relative to the typical income in that ZIP, not that every renter there is cost-burdened.
• Metro medians weight each ZIP equally. Population-weighted figures would sit closer to the North Metro's values, because that is where the people are.
• Walk Score, Transit Score and the crime index on this site's ZIP pages are editorial estimates and are excluded from this report.

Cite as: Atlanta Zip Codes Data Team, Atlanta ZIP Code Affordability Report 2026, atlantazipcodes.com, published 2026-09-20. Data: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 5-Year Estimates. Each ZIP code in the tables links to its full profile page.

Frequently asked questions