Atlanta Home Building Industry Has Significant Impact on Economy

As we all know, home building generates economic benefits such as income and jobs for local residents and revenue for local governments. It also typically imposes costs on local governments, such as the costs of providing primary and secondary education, police and fire protection and water and sewer service. Not only do these services require annual expenditures for items such as teacher salaries, they typically also require capital investment in buildings, other structures and equipment that local governments own and maintain.

During these tough economic times, it’s been more important than ever to illustrate the benefits of the home construction industry to the public and media. With that in mind, over the summer, the Greater Atlanta HBA commissioned a study from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) to illustrate the economic impact of home building in metro Atlanta.

Recently, NAHB Economist Elliot Eisenberg came to the HBA’s Gwinnett and Metro South chapter meetings to present the results of the report, which reflects home building activity in Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties, from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008.

In the time frame above, 12,997 new single-family homes built in the nine-county Atlanta region resulted in an estimated:

• $290 million in tax and other revenue for local governments
• $37.1 million in current expenditures by local government to provide public services to the net new households at current levels
• $276.2 million in capital investment for new structures and equipment undertaken by local governments

In a typical year after the first, the 12,997 single-family homes result in

• $114 million in tax and other revenue for local governments
  $74.2 million in local government expenditures needed to continue providing services at current levels

The studies also illustrate that in several of these counties, home building generates enough jobs to put it in the top three industries that provide jobs in these nine local counties.