Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
Sale price by era built, relative to an identical home built 1995 to 1999. Controlled for square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms and date of sale. 576 closed sales in ZIP 30005, August 2024 through August 2026. Source: FMLS.
Every buyer I take through Windward eventually asks the same question. Two houses, same street, same size, same finishes. One went up in 1990 and one in 2000. How much is that decade worth?
It is a fair question and nobody ever answers it with a number. So I pulled every closed detached single family sale in ZIP 30005 over the past two years, 576 of them, and ran the regression.
The straight answer: about $50,000 a decade
Holding square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, neighborhood and sale date constant, every year of age takes roughly 0.6% off the price. On an $800,000 Windward-area home that is about $5,000 a year, so the 1990 house and the 2000 house end up around $50,000 apart.
That is the answer most people expect. It is also the least useful number in the data, because the average hides the shape.
Age does not bleed value evenly
When I let each era of construction have its own number instead of forcing a straight line, something more interesting shows up. Once you control for size, everything built between 1985 and 2014 trades within a few points of everything else. A 1987 build and a 2007 build are worth about the same money, and none of those gaps are wide enough to call real.
| Year built | Price vs. an identical 1995-99 home |
|---|---|
| 1985 to 1989 | +5.0% |
| 1990 to 1994 | -3.1% |
| 1995 to 1999 | baseline |
| 2000 to 2004 | -3.9% |
| 2005 to 2009 | -4.9% |
| 2010 to 2014 | +5.8% |
| 2015 or newer | +28.7% |
Then the last ten years break away. Homes built in 2015 or later sold for about 29% more than an otherwise identical 1990s home. On a typical sale in our area that is close to $200,000.
That premium is not a fluke of one new subdivision. It held at 25% when I added controls for the specific neighborhood, and at 27% when I dropped Halcyon and the Caney Creek builds out of the data entirely.
What this means if you are selling
Your 1996 house is not being punished for its birthday. It is being priced on condition.
The market has already decided that a well kept 1996 home and a well kept 1987 home are worth about the same thing. That means the roof, the HVAC, the kitchen and the floors are doing the work the build year is not. Which is good news, because that is the part you control. Moving from the bottom of your era to the top of it is worth more than a decade of construction date.
What this means if you are buying
New construction in and around Windward is asking roughly a $200,000 premium over the 1990s inventory. That is the number to hold up against a renovation budget, not against a feeling.
Sometimes new wins. Often it does not, especially when the older house sits on a lot, a street, and a school assignment the new one cannot match. Run the two numbers side by side before you decide.
How I got there, and where it is soft
576 closed detached single family sales in ZIP 30005 between August 21, 2024 and August 21, 2026, pulled from FMLS. I regressed the log of sale price on square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, year built, subdivision and date of sale, so the age figure describes two homes that are alike in every other way I can measure. The model explains about 81% of the variation in price.
The weak spot is the new end. Only 19 of the 576 sales were homes built in 2015 or later, so I am comfortable calling the new construction premium 25% to 29% and not comfortable calling it one number. The per year estimate is sturdier and held between 0.55% and 0.99% across every version of the model I ran, including trimming outliers, dropping the sales above $2 million, and running it on 2025 closings only.
Square footage comes from the MLS price per square foot field. Eight sales were missing it, and one 1960 build was the only home in the set older than 1980, so 567 closings carried the model.
Windward by the Numbers
This is part of a running series where I take one question about the Windward market and answer it with the actual sales data instead of a rule of thumb. Earlier editions looked at what a pool is worth, what a finished basement is worth, what the lake premium really is, and which month is the best month to list.
A new one goes out most Fridays. If you want them as they publish, the subscribe box on the blog page will do it, and you can reply to any of them with a question about your own street.
Thinking about buying or selling in Windward? I work North Atlanta full-time and I bring 30 years of New York real estate experience to every deal. Send me your address and I will run it against the same 576 sales.
