Housing stock is needed in Polk County, but one way that the increase isn’t wanted is developers creating a big new neighborhood, then turning around and selling all the new residences to investors who seek rental income instead of single family home ownership out of the deal.

The City of Cedartown is taking steps to curtail that building practice before it has a chance to take root locally after the City Commission on Monday night unanimously approved a moratorium on ‘build to rent’ housing.

City Manager Edward Guzman said ahead of the vote that the purpose of the moratorium is to allow for officials to have time to craft reasonable regulations on the practice of building new homes that look like they might go on the market, but are scooped up before they become available for sale.

The hope is to avoid creating a large rental market for housing, but instead focus on single family home ownership when new neighborhoods begin to spring up in and around the area.

“There’s communities in Metro Atlanta, that are… because of the growth that is happening in Georgia – good growth,” he explained. “But there are also some situations that are occurring where a a developer comes to town and says ‘I want to build 100 single family homes in the community’ but may not state all the details of what they want to do with all those single family homes, and then have a private investor come in and buy all 100 single family homes and then they’ll have their stipulation of, well, we’re not going to let anyone have future ownership of these homes, we just want to make the rent off of them.”

He added that it can cause multiple problems in the community when investors purchase up so many homes and only offer them up for rent.

The pause on build to rent homes will only be in place for 180 days until staff can come up with a way to deal with the issue before it lands in local backyards.

Commissioner Jessica Payton added when making the motion to approve the moratorium that “we are growing, and we are trying our very best to be proactive in making sure the housing that is coming to Cedartown is quality housing.”

“I think that is very important for the people who currently live here and who will come to live here to protect Cedartown and make it as great as it can possibly be,” Payton added.

Commission Chair Sam Branch during his commissioner comments echoed Payton’s sentiments about the growth happening in and around the city limits when mentioning the more than 700 youth who took part in opening ceremonies for recreation department baseball and softball leagues.

“It’s just further proof that growth and development is not coming, it is here and it is knocking on the door,” Branch said. “I feel like we talk about that a lot… it is not coming anymore, it is here.”

He noted that past and current city leadership have put policies in place to help the City of Cedartown manage forthcoming growth opportunities as Metro Atlanta continues to expand outward past the suburbs as new residents seek out a patch of property to call their own.

Though not a major problem in Polk County yet, officials hope to get ahead of a growing trend in and around Metro Atlanta of Build-to-Rent housing, causing an increase in rental costs for those who can’t afford home ownership.

Moratoriums like this in the past have been put in place to help city leadership craft regulations within Cedartown’s limits on past businesses, like a moratorium put in place to limit new building of storage unit rentals in the city limits, and another on new convenience stores to avoid too many crowding out other business opportunities.