Welcome to “Y’allywood”: Atlanta Is Now the Hot Spot for Celebrity Home Buyers

Welcome to “Y’allywood”: Atlanta Is Now the Hot Spot for Celebrity Home Buyers - WSJ

When actor Norman Reedus was first cast in AMC’s drama series “The Walking Dead,” he found a rental apartment near the show’s Atlanta-area set, expecting the housing arrangement would be temporary. “I thought they’d kill me off in the first week,” he said recently, recalling playing Daryl Dixon in 2010.

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When Reedus realized his character wasn’t going anywhere, he paid $2.9 million in 2015 for a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in Serenbe, a luxury residential community about 30 miles outside Atlanta.

Cheyenne Crawford/Homestar Media

Long a hub for hip-hop artists, musicians and pro athletes, Atlanta and its environs have become a mecca for the film and TV industries, thanks to Georgia state tax credits and incentives for film and video production that were enacted in 2005. Over the past decade-plus, hundreds of movies and TV shows have been shot in Georgia.

Serenbe

While some production crews and actors rent homes for short-term stays, more editors, cameramen, stuntmen, makeup artists and producers are moving to Georgia and buying homes closer to what is becoming a burgeoning epicenter of film production.

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“There’s so much Hollywood going on in Georgia that they call it Y’allywood now,” Reedus said. “They’re all moving there because the work is there. It has become The Place to film.”

Reedus' Atlanta home. Photo: Cheyenne Crawford/Homestar Media

Actor Josh Brolin and his wife, Kathryn Boyd Brolin, bought a house in the Atlanta area in 2020, paying $3.25 million for a home in Sandy Springs, a suburb about 15 miles north of Atlanta. (It’s listed for rent asking $35,000 a month, according to Zillow.)

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TV host and producer Steve Harvey bought a nearly 35,000-square-foot mansion in the Buckhead district for $15 million in 2020, records show. The seller was actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry.

Eric McCandless/ABC/Getty Images

Overall, Georgia had 4 million square feet of stage space in 2023, up from 45,000 square feet in 2010, according to the Georgia Film Office. Film and TV productions spent $4.1 billion in Georgia in fiscal 2023, the office said, and between 2011 and 2021, Georgia added more than 15,600 movie and video-industry jobs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Ryan Millsap, whose background is in commercial real estate, moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles around 2014 and pivoted to developing real estate for the film-production business. The Missouri native said the move was predicated by his divorce. At the time, he owned apartments in the Sunbelt and found himself wondering, “Why am I living in L.A. if I don’t have to?”

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Around 2015, he purchased a 108-acre farm in Social Circle, a small city about 50 miles outside of Atlanta. The same year, he founded Blackhall Studios, which owned and operated an 850,000-square-foot film-production facility on 100 acres in Atlanta.

“The tax credit is everything,” Millsap said. “The amount of content being made in Georgia… Georgia is punching way above its weight class.”

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After remarrying in 2021, Millsap paid $5.15 million for a 1930s house on about 3.5 acres in Tuxedo Park, one of Atlanta’s oldest residential neighborhoods. He did a $4 million renovation, then listed it for $11.5 million in December. He said his family prefer the farm.

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“I love the South,” he said, adding that Atlanta has four seasons and feels like a “gigantic small town” with a dynamic economy despite a slower pace of life. The cost of living is drastically lower, too. “If you’re coming from L.A., you live like your billionaire friends without being a billionaire,” Millsap said.

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Over the past few years, Atlanta real-estate prices have shot up. During 2023’s fourth quarter, the median sales price for luxury homes was $1.3 million in 2023, up 10.8% compared with the fourth quarter of 2022.

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Real-estate agent Hasan Pasha of Pasha Luxury said actors typically rent during their first stint in Atlanta, but want a permanent place if they return. Many gravitate to areas like Piedmont Park, the BeltLine and Buckhead, which has larger homes with more privacy.

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But making movies doesn’t guarantee steady incomeâ€"making it tricky to get a mortgage. For that reason, actors and production-crew members often are cash buyers, said Jimmy Baron of Keller Williams First Atlanta. “They make a movie, they make a bunch of money and they buy a house.”

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About seven years ago, the owners of Atlanta’s largest film-production studioâ€"then known as Pinewood Atlanta Studiosâ€"began building a live-work-play community in Fayetteville, about 30 minutes from the Atlanta airport.

Town at Trilith

Known as the Town at Trilith, the 235-acre master-planned community is part of the 1,000-acre studio complex. It will have about 750 homes when completed, in about five years. So far, about 30% of home buyers are connected to the entertainment industry, said Rob Parker, president of the Town at Trilith.

Town at Trilith

The Town has restaurants, stores, sports courts, a school and church, and homes are designed in the style of European villages. “Everything was designed intentionally to have a movie atmosphere,” said Lori Lane of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices GA Properties. The community has 1,000 trees, 15 miles of trails, 54 acres of forest and 19 parks.

Town at Trilith

Serenbe, the luxury community where Reedus owns a home, has also attracted high-profile residents. In addition to restaurants, gyms and a school, part of the allure is privacy, which Reedus said was a key selling point when he bought his home there in 2015. “At that point, I had people in my bushes and people following me home,” he said. “It doesn’t have a direct neighbor.”

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Cover image: Town at Trilith

Photo editor: Mindy Katzman

Produced by Shay D. Cohen

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