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If you think apartment rent is already too high in Atlanta, findings from a new study suggest you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Apartment List, an online rental site, commissioned a study recently to show what Amazon’s H2Q project would mean for renters in a handful of cities with legitimate chances of landing the company.
Amazon announced last fall that it would be holding what amounted to sweepstakes to choose its next world-class headquarters. The company is based out of Seattle, Washington.
In addition to Atlanta (and nearby suburb Stonecrest) Denver, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore and Washington have all stepped up to the plate with elaborate proposals.
Pundits say Atlanta has to be the leading choice because the city best fits Amazon’s criteria of amenities, including adequate transit system, and a location within in an hour of an international airport.
The study, which took into account data from the U.S. Census as well as Labor Bureau stats, indicated that most metro areas would see more jobs than housing, which would raise real estate prices.
“We project that Raleigh, N.C., Pittsburgh and San Jose will feel the rent increase the most, while the impact will be smaller in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Dallas,” the study said.
The study’s authors added: “According to Apartment List analysis, rents in Raleigh, San Jose, Baltimore and Pittsburgh will be the most impacted by Amazon choosing to build its HQ2 in their metros, with rents expected to increase by an additional 1 percent or more per year over the next ten years.”
Atlanta was among the cities projected to see a “moderate” increase in apartment rents, characterized by 0.5 to 1 percent, according to the study. Other cities in this lot included Boston, Detroit, Austin, Minneapolis and Denver.
The ATL is seen by experts as the city to beat. In November, Sperling’s BestPlaces, a website dedicated to livability issues named Atlanta as the front-runner in a study of likely HQ2 sites.
“In our Amazon Hyper-Ranking, the metro area of Atlanta is the clear winner, with six 1st-place selections,” the report read. “Atlanta was cited by many studies and articles as being large enough to absorb the expected 50,000 new Amazon workers, being a major air hub, and having a reasonable cost of living.”
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And then there were 20. That’s the number of cities that have made the shortlist to be the site of Amazon’s second world headquarters. Atlanta joins cities such as Austin, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Toronto and Washington, D.C., the company said Thursday.
As we reported earlier, Amazon, the world’s No. 1 online retailer, is poised to move to the next phase of its hunt for the best HQ2 city: Tax incentives.
“Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough – all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” Holly Sullivan, an executive with Amazon Public Policy, said in a statement. “Through this process we learned about many new communities across North America that we will consider as locations for future infrastructure investment and job creation.”
Texas is said to be offering some tax incentives on par with Georgia’s $1 billion on the table. The stakes are high: Amazon said it will invest up to $5 billion in the local economy and create 50,000 jobs for the city it chooses.
The Inc. quoted Jeremy Bodenhamer, who runs a $13 million shipping and logistics firm,: “We believe they will select Atlanta,”he was quoted as saying. He cited the area’s deep well of tech talent as well as the region’s reputation as harboring people with top logistical knowledge (UPS as well as Lockheed is based here) a top reason.
