Inman Park Home Guide: Everything You Need to Know
Are you moving to Atlanta and interested in living in a walkable neighborhood with incredible historic architecture? You’re going to want to learn more about Inman Park.
The Atlanta area as a whole provides a wide variety of housing options– everything from apartments in the bustling downtown to large homes on big lots in quiet suburbs can be found in the Atlanta metro. However, the further you get from the city, the more likely you’ll be purchasing a more recently built home in a development, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
In Inman Park, you can find a wide range of homes, many of which date back to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century– everything from elaborate Queen Anne Victorians to small shotguns can be found in this neighborhood.
At the same time, Inman Park is a highly desirable area with higher home prices and a competitive market. Is it worth trying to score an abode in this Intown neighborhood, or are there places better suited to your lifestyle? Let’s take a look at what you should know to help you make an informed decision before you start shopping around and making offers.
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Inman Park: An Overview
Located on the east side of Atlanta, Inman Park is an Intown neighborhood that abuts the neighborhoods of Candler Park, Edgewood, Reynoldstown, Old Fourth Ward, and Poncey-Highland.
Though Inman Park was economically depressed after middle and upper-class residents left for the suburbs in the 50s and 60s, it has become a highly desirable in-town neighborhood after decades of restoration and renewal. With a mixture of condos, owner-occupied houses, and rentals, there is a wide range of architectural styles ranging from Victorian mansions to tiny shotguns with early 20th-century bungalows of all sizes thrown in the mix.
There are nominal annual dues that must be paid when one lives in Inman Park, and residents can come together every spring to celebrate the Inman Park Festival. Notable as being the largest all-volunteer festival in the entire state, one of the fixtures of this festival is the Tour of Homes.
According to niche.com, there are more than 3,600 residents that live in Inman Park. The median household income in the neighborhood is more than $144,600, with 84% of residents holding either a bachelor’s degree or higher. The bulk of residents are between 25 and 44, with 25-34-year-olds making up 35% of the population and 35-44-year-olds making up 21% of the population.
Are you relocating to The Big Peach from The Big Apple? Make sure you check out our ultimate guide for moving from NYC to Atlanta.
A Brief History of Inman Park
Inman Park was named for Samuel M. Inman, a prominent cotton merchant and businessman who lived from 1843 to 1915. The first planned suburb in Atlanta, the area that is now known as Inman Park, includes a number of other areas that originally were designated by other names, including:
Moreland Park (Today known as the Inman Park-Moreland Historic District)
Areas on the western side that were once industrial and are now mixed-use developments, including North Highland Street and Inman Park Village
Part of Copenhill Park, other parts of which are now a part of the Poncey-Highland neighborhood
Of course, this is in addition to Inman Park proper, which is known today as the Inman Park Historic District.
Planned in the late 1880s by a real estate developer and civil engineer named Joel Hurt, Inman Park was designed to be a rural oasis connected to Atlanta by an electric streetcar line. The landscape designer Joseph Forsyth Johnson was hired for the project and incorporated a great deal of open spaces and curvilinear street designs to create the beautiful neighborhood.
Though it was created with a lofty vision in mind, the arrival of automobiles ultimately led the neighborhood into decline. As people chose to live further from the city and commute via car, Inman Park was no longer the fashionable place to live. Beyond that, the Victorian architecture we so appreciate today was, at the time, seen as a bit outdated.
As people left the neighborhood for the suburbs to the north, the city experienced an economic depression. At the same time, Inman Park was one of the first Intown neighborhoods to be revitalized in the city, with a neighborhood association (Inman Park Restoration), a neighborhood newsletter, and a garden club emerging in order to restore the public spaces in the area. Around this time, they started the Tour of Homes and associated festivals in order to showcase the truly spectacular architecture in the neighborhood.
Thanks to the efforts of those who worked to restore Inman Park after its decline, it’s now one of the most sought-after Intown neighborhoods. With incredible architecture, many places to shop and dine, and a highly walkable design, it’s hard not to see the charm in this historic part of the city.
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Home Prices and the Housing Market in Inman Park
Inman Park is a highly desirable area of Atlanta, and the home prices there reflect this fact. According to Redfin, home prices in Inman Park were up 16.3% in July 2023 compared to the previous year. The median sale price is $1 million on the nose, with homes going quickly after just nine days on the market.
Inman Park is a very competitive housing market, with many homes getting multiple offers quickly. It’s also not unheard of for buyers to waive contingencies in order to make their offer more attractive to buyers. Homes with the most interest can sell for about 5% above the list price, while average homes sell 1% over the list price.
Are you searching for the perfect home in Inman Park? You can use our property search tool to look at all of the available listings in Inman Park right now.
If you’re interested in getting a little more bang for your buck when it comes to purchasing a house, take a look at our guide to the most affordable Atlanta suburbs.
Architectural Styles in Inman Park
Some of the best residential architecture from the late 1800s and early 1900s in Atlanta can be found in Inman Park. There is a wide range of architectural styles here, and its creation as a garden suburb means that these beautiful homes exist in the context of well-laid-out streets, parks, and other public spaces.
Queen Anne
One of the most notable Queen Anne Victorians in Inman Park is the Beath-Dickey House. This home, built in 1890, played a truly central role in the renaissance of Inman Park after the neighborhood deteriorated. In 1969, the house was purchased by Robert Griggs and Robert Aiken and renovated, which sparked the revitalization of the neighborhood as a whole.
Queen Anne Victorians were the most popular 19th-century home style in Georgia. Developed in England by drawing from medieval Elizabethan and Jacobean sources, architects in the U.S. creatively adapted the English masonry designs into wood-framed houses.
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High-Style Italianate
Italianate homes were primarily built in Georgia during the 1850s and 1870s in cities and were modeled on the villas or informal farmhouses of the Italian countryside. Typically utilizing an L-shaped or other irregularly shaped plan, these asymmetrical homes can be more informal or less formal depending on the context in which they were built.
More formal, high-style Italianates tend to have more classically inspired features, such as cornices with dentils, columns, and corner quoins.
Bungalows
Intermixed with elaborate Victorian mansions are bungalows of all sizes.
These cottage-type homes were typically built as one-story dwellings and feature open floor plans, sloped roofs, broad front porches, and large front windows.
Foursquares
A popular style in the U.S. between the 1890s and late 1930s, the American Foursquare was a reaction against the Victorian and other popular Revival styles that had been popular for decades. Incorporating elements of the Craftsmen and Prairie School styles, these homes are much simpler in style than ornate and elaborate Queen Anne Victorians.
Have you decided that Intown Atlanta is the place for you, but you’re not quite sure if Inman Park is the right fit? Take a look at our guide to Brookhaven, Georgia, to help you learn more about another highly sought-after Intown spot.
Shotguns
Another common house style in Inman Park is the shotgun. Long and skinny, shotguns are typically no more than twelve feet wide. There’s usually a door at each end of the house, which helped provide the ability to keep these houses cool and provide whole-house air circulation in a time before air conditioning.
The common layout of having a door at each end is said by some to be where this style gets its name– essentially, you could shoot a bullet from the front door and have it exit the back door without hitting anything else along the way.
Shotgun homes were the most popular style in the South, starting at the end of the Civil War and continuing through to the early 20th century.
Not sure if you’re better suited for living right in the city or getting a bit out of town in the ‘burbs? You can learn more about the differences between ITP and OTP Atlanta in this guide.
Transportation Options in Inman Park
If you’re considering moving to Inman Park, you’ll likely want to start thinking about how you’d get around the neighborhood and city. Located just 2.5 miles from downtown, commuting to the city from Inman Park can take about fifteen minutes, traffic depending.
One great thing about Inman Park is that it is very well connected to the rest of the city by the MARTA rail and bus systems. There is an Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA rail station, which serves the north-south Green Line as well as the east/west Blue Line.
There is also an Inman Park stop by the Atlanta Streetcar, which can bring you to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and generally downtown.
It’s also worth noting that Atlanta is becoming increasingly bike-friendly as a city. There are a number of bike-friendly streets and bike lanes in Inman Park, and the first finished section of the Atlanta BeltLine is adjacent to the neighborhood.
For more information to help you determine which neighborhood of Atlanta is right for you, take a look at our guides to the best private schools, the best country clubs and golf courses, and the most suitable gated communities in the metro area.
Are You Moving to Atlanta?
Lots of people are moving to Atlanta right now, and for good reason. With great weather, lots of job opportunities, a vibrant and diverse culture, a comparably lower cost of living than other major US cities, and more, people are starting to discover that Atlanta is a great place to call home.
At the same time, this means that the Atlanta housing market can be pretty competitive. This is particularly true in highly desirable neighborhoods like Inman Park. If you’re shopping around for the right home in Atlanta, it’s essential to have a team of world-class experts on your side who will do everything they can to help you achieve your real estate goals.
That’s where we come in. At the Justin Landis Group, it’s our mission to help make your dream a reality, whatever it may be. You won’t just have a dedicated real estate agent who serves as your primary point of contact when you work with us, but there will also be a team of highly qualified professionals working in the background to ensure you have a competitive edge in your housing search.
Are you ready to get started? If so, reach out today and tell us a bit about your real estate dreams.