Pull up any portal and Sandy Springs looks like a market cooling in place. The Redfin citywide median sits at $700,000 as of the three months ending April 2026, down 3.1% from the same period a year earlier, with homes taking 41 days to sell instead of 34. Inside the perimeter, the same window shows a median of $885,000, down 13.7% year over year.
Those numbers are accurate and misleading at the same time. Sandy Springs is not one market softening evenly. It is two markets moving in opposite directions, and the citywide median is the average of a construction discount near the nodes and a low-density hold in the neighborhoods behind them. Which side of that line a home sits on decides what your money buys for the next five years.
The number that hides two markets
The city's own planning language explains the split before any agent does. Sandy Springs' 2026 development pattern is best described as intensification in nodes: large projects cluster near City Springs and the Central Perimeter and MARTA station areas, while most residential neighborhoods stay stable and low-density. Since 2017, roughly 75% of the city's land has been protected inside residential neighborhoods, parks, or green space.
That is not a slogan. It is a zoning posture, and it is about to be reaffirmed. On June 23, 2026, the city kicked off "The Next Chapter," a 12-month rewrite of its comprehensive plan and parks master plan, with state submission targeted for June 2027. A comp plan is not legally binding, but city boards and council members routinely cite it when they vote on rezonings. Buyers touring homes this summer are shopping inside a policy freeze that is about to become policy commitment.
So the practical question is not "is Sandy Springs going up or down." It is: which side of the node line is this house on.
Where the pipeline actually lands
Almost all of the new supply the market is absorbing right now sits in a small number of parcels. Naming them is the point.
| Project | Where | What is coming |
|---|---|---|
| Hillcrest | 8.1 acres on Mount Vernon Highway, steps from City Hall | 362 apartments, 30 for-rent townhomes, 19,000+ sf retail, delivery expected end of 2027 |
| Embassy Row | 28 acres at 6600 Peachtree Dunwoody in Central Perimeter | 1,068 multifamily units, 111 townhomes, 159,463 sf office, 15,300 sf retail, completion listed as 2032 |
| City Springs Phase II | Parcels at Hildebrand and Mount Vernon, across from City Green | Restaurants, experiential retail, a boutique hotel, limited residential; stalled on financing since 2024 |
| Three infill subdivisions | Spalding/Pitts, Whitner, and a Dunwoody-border site | 26 new single-family homes on lots that previously held seven, approved May 19, 2026 |
Hillcrest is the one to watch. It is being built by High Street Residential, a subsidiary of Trammell Crow, with Third & Urban as partner. When it delivers in late 2027, walkable retail demand around City Springs jumps by several hundred households at once. Embassy Row is a longer play, filed for Development of Regional Impact review by Insignia in April 2026 with a 2032 completion date, but its 1,100-plus residences will land inside a Central Perimeter submarket that already carries the region's densest office footprint.
Almost none of this touches the residential streets behind those corridors. That is the split.
The construction discount is temporary, and it is priced in right now
The ITP median down 13.7% year over year is not a value judgment on the housing. It is what a market looks like when buyers can see the orange cones from the porch.
Roughly $27 million of active construction along Mount Vernon Highway, including the intersection with Johnson Ferry and Roswell Road, is scheduled to wrap by the end of May 2026, with inspection services extended to cover utility delays. The larger corridor project (the city calls it TS192) runs from the Sandy Springs Library to the MARTA station, adding a multi-use path on the south side of Mount Vernon, six-foot sidewalks on the north, new turn lanes at Glenridge, Barfield, Crestline, Peachtree Dunwoody, and Perimeter Center West, plus signal upgrades. It is funded in part through TSPLOST and the Perimeter CID and is estimated to take about two years.
Hammond Drive is the other one. While some metro cities are reducing travel lanes, Sandy Springs is expanding them at intersections and along Hammond. Layer in the State Route 400 widening, which GDOT and Peach State Partners kicked off this spring, and the near-term traffic picture in the exact corridors where the housing pipeline lands gets worse before it gets better.
Buyers who can tolerate two to three years of visible construction are, in effect, being paid to do so. That is what the ITP discount is.
What the comp plan just told buyers
At the June 23 kickoff, residents described the city with words like vibrant, congested, green, growing, and expensive. Planning and Zoning Manager Michelle McIntosh-Ross reported hearing consistently positive feedback about the City Springs campus. Council Member Andrew Chinsky, defending the recent Whitner Drive infill approval, put the affordability math bluntly, noting that further-restricted lot splits would push new-construction prices toward $3 to $4 million and make it harder for a new family to move in.
Read the signals together and the direction is clear:
Density gets concentrated near the nodes. Established neighborhoods stay protected. Infill happens on a case-by-case basis, often with conditions attached (turn lanes before homes, HOA-maintained buffers, driveway placement).
For a buyer, that is the most useful sentence in this post. It tells you why a home three blocks off Roswell Road behaves differently from a home three blocks off Mount Paran, even at the same list price.
What roughly $700K actually buys, by zone
The citywide median is a math artifact. Here is what it maps to on the ground.
Near the nodes, at or under the citywide median, buyers are increasingly looking at attached product: townhomes and condos within walking distance of City Springs, or older mid-rise units near Perimeter. The trade is short-term construction exposure for long-term walkability to the retail Hillcrest and Phase II are meant to anchor. Days on market are longer here, and sale-to-list ratios are softer than the citywide 97.39% Houzeo reports for March 2026.
In the protected residential interior, the same money buys less house than it did in 2023, but the comp plan is telling you why the lot itself is unlikely to change. Older single-family homes on larger lots off Mount Paran, Powers Ferry, or Riverside are pricing closer to the city median, sometimes with a Chattahoochee-adjacent premium once the 23-acre Old Riverside Park opens (a $4 million Eastern Builders contract, targeted for year-end 2026, on 6500 Old Riverside Drive).
West of the interior, near the Chattahoochee, the story is amenity delivery, not construction friction. That is a different discount curve entirely.
Reading the map before you write the offer
Three questions do most of the work.
- Is the home inside a node corridor (roughly Roswell Road, Powers Ferry commercial, Central Perimeter, Mount Vernon between the library and MARTA), or in a protected residential pocket behind it?
- Which active project is closest, and what is its delivery date? A 2026 finish line reads very differently from a 2032 finish line.
- Does the comp plan's community-character map, currently being drafted, treat this street as stable residential or as a transition edge? The maps shown at the June 23 open house are the working document.
A buyer who answers those three before touring is comparing apples to apples across Sandy Springs. A buyer who only reads the citywide median is comparing a fruit basket to a fruit basket.
FAQ
Is the ITP price drop a warning sign or a buying window? For a buyer with a five-year horizon who can live through Mount Vernon and Hammond construction, it looks more like a window. The pipeline that is currently pressuring prices is also what will support walkable retail once Hillcrest delivers in late 2027.
Are the new infill subdivisions going to change my neighborhood? The three approved in May 2026 add 26 homes across three sites where seven previously stood. Conditions attached to the rezonings (turn lanes built before homes, HOA-maintained buffers, driveway placement away from Mount Vernon) suggest the council is willing to approve infill only when the traffic and buffer math is spelled out.
Should I wait for the comprehensive plan to finalize? The plan is a 12-month process with state submission in June 2027. If you find the right home this year, the current character maps are the best read on how your street will be treated when the plan is adopted.
How much does a Central Perimeter MARTA-adjacent condo differ from a Riverside-adjacent single-family? They are effectively two different asset classes now. One is a bet on node intensification. The other is a bet on protected low-density and river-corridor amenity delivery. Same city, different investment thesis.
If you are weighing Sandy Springs against Marietta, Roswell, or Alpharetta this summer, the citywide median will not tell you what your money buys. A conversation about which corridor, which pipeline, and which comp-plan designation will. Keisha Williams is glad to walk that map with you. Let's Connect.
