New Housing Starts Continue To Grow Across Floyd County

New housing starts in Floyd County continue their explosive growth.

According to local real estate professionals, new construction starts are continuing at a brisk pace and the number of available homes continues to grow.

“We’ve got the highest amount of housing inventory available, 280 homes, since before the pandemic,” said Hardy Real Estate and Development Agency President Jimmy Byars. “However, pre-pandemic, we averaged 500 homes available per year.”

Byars believes that housing startups are trending up, and he believes as we move closer to 500 available homes then housing prices should stabilize.

He also said that before the 2008 housing crash, Floyd County averaged 1,000 home for sale, which served to depress home prices.

Byars pointed to new subdivisions on Eden Valley and Chulio roads, as well as 950 new homes possible on Callier Springs Road, as a sign that the market is not showing any sign of cooling.

He said he’s not exactly sure where all the people are coming from, but he believes slow and steady job growth is the root cause of the growth in the housing market.

“Incremental job growth in Rome leads to exponential housing growth across the county,” Byars said.

The developers building in Rome and Floyd County are a blend of large regional developers, mid-size independent developers and a healthy number of local developers with deep experience in the area, according to Bill Temple of Toles, Temple & Wright.

“It’s a real mix of developers,” Temple said. “D.R. Wharton has four projects in our area, and they are one of the largest developers in the country.”

However, despite Floyd County’s current growth, Temple said that Cartersville and Bartow County are white-hot.

“Cartersville is experiencing hyper-growth right now,” Temple said. “I don’t know if we have the appetite for that kind of growth here.”

As Rome and Floyd County continue to grow, Temple said we need to start looking ahead to our infrastructure needs.

“We should really look at restarting the southeast bypass project,” he said. “That would really help with development in the southern part of the county.”