18 Cottages on Two Acres in South DeKalb. The Income Tiers Are the Whole Story.

Eighteen new cottages are planned for a plot of land on Midway Road in Decatur, in South DeKalb. Two acres, eighteen units, and a structure that matters more than the unit count.

All eighteen will not sell under the same income requirements. The owner of Microlife laid out the split: six homes reserved at 80% of area median income, six at 120% of area median income, and six at market rate. Area median income in this part of Atlanta runs about $80,000.

The project is benefiting from a Decide DeKalb program built to make homes more accessible in South DeKalb. The mechanism is a buydown. Decide DeKalb buys down the market rate price point so that a household at 80% AMI, or one at 120% AMI, can carry the mortgage on a house that would otherwise be priced past them.

A cottage court is a building type that focuses on establishing a housing community. And while this isn't a new concept, what makes this one worth a resident's attention is that two thirds of the homes have an income ceiling attached, on for-sale product, in a county where most new ownership housing is priced at whatever the market will bear. Six units at 80% AMI is not a housing policy by itself. It is six families who own instead of rent, and the structure is the thing being tested here, not the architecture.

The questions that decide whether this is an opportunity for a specific household are the ones that have not been answered on the record yet: the verified pricing at each tier, the exact income limits, and how the application process works. Those are the numbers worth waiting on, because a buydown program only means something to you once you can hold your own income up against the limit and see which of the three tiers, if any, you land in.