“The Atlanta market is extremely good,” Moody said. “With so many people working remotely these days, they have found Atlanta to be a great place to live.”

The city is also especially attractive to minorities, in part because its leadership has emphasized diversity and provided them with opportunities, said Moody, who is Black and a graduate of Morehouse College, a historically Black institution.

“The city has done an incredible job of working through the race issue,” he said. Since the 1970s, leaders have “guaranteed everyone would have opportunity.”

Raphael Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said in an interview last week that he and his fellow policy makers may need to speed up the removal of monetary stimulus to help quell the surge in inflation nationwide. Bostic said he wanted to see additional data before making a decision.

In Atlanta, whose population of 6.1 million makes it the ninth biggest metro area in the country, the elevated inflation rate partly stems from its lower starting point, said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. A quarterly cost of living index from the nonprofit Council for Community and Economic Research ranks Atlanta as 51st out of 263 midsize and large metro areas in the U.S.

Still, a mix of cash-rich investors and an influx of migrants from up North are squeezing out locals. Before the Great Recession, Atlanta had one of America’s biggest supplies of small and local home builders that were willing to construct houses at lower price points, said John O’Callaghan, chief executive of the nonprofit Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, which helps finance affordable housing.

“Today, national builders have largely come in,” O’Callaghan said. “They are developing product at $350,000 up to a million dollars or more, and really are not at the affordable end.”

The city’s also an epicenter of the single-family rental industry, where Wall Street-backed landlords such as My Community Homes buy and manage houses across the U.S. Sun Belt. Atlanta had the highest share of homes purchased by investors in the third quarter, 32%, among 40 metro areas analyzed by Redfin Corp.

That’s led to rent increases. Data from Apartment List show prices are up 24% in Atlanta in the past year, Wells Fargo’s Vitner said in a note.

Clothes are also getting a lot more expensive.