FRANK NIEMEIR / Staff Rising prices discouraged Lucy and Todd Mark, with daughter Katie, 3, from selling their Cherokee home to buy a larger house.   Related: COMPARE PRICES BY ZIP CODE • Complete Home Report 2004

They hoped to find a house either in Cobb County, which is closer to Todd's Atlanta job, or farther north in Cherokee, where they thought about buying a larger house with a community pool, tennis courts and parks.

They discovered that the market had shifted under them in the seven years since they came here.

Prices for larger new homes near Canton have climbed past what they could afford on Todd's salary as a public relations manager for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta. Lucy is a full-time mother.

"We could move out another 5 to 10 miles and be paying anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000 more for less house. To me, that doesn't sound like the formula I was shopping for," he said.

Houses they looked at in Cobb were older as well as more expensive, and offered even less floor space than their Cherokee home. Then, mortgage rates crept up a bit while they were considering the change.

"We were financially unable to move. We found we had such a good deal that we couldn't match it," Todd said.

"The decision was made for us. Until our home's value jumps up even more to catch up with what is going on outside of where we live, we are financially stapled to where we are right now. So we will make do."

Less of a refuge

Home prices in Cherokee County long have offered refuge for first-time buyers and those fleeing Atlanta looking for bigger digs or country scenery. The homesteading success, however, is pushing prices upward as the county gets more crowded and land more expensive.

In late 1999 and early 2000, the median home price in Cherokee County stood at $143,000. In 2003, the median house price had climbed to $172,700, according to Smart Numbers, an Atlanta company that tracks home sales and costs. That home price would be out of reach for many workers in Cherokee County, including those the public calls on every day for help.

A starting fireman's salary in Cherokee is $27,880 a year, and a first-year teacher's salary begins at $33,660, according to county records.

Aimee Cline, secretary to Mayor Cecil Pruett of Canton, is looking to buy her first house.

"From about $129,000 to $140,000 is about all you can afford as a single living on a single income," she said.

Homes in that price range are available, but more limited than higher-priced offerings, she said.

Sales figures from Smart Numbers show that about one of five houses sold in Cherokee in 2003 cost less than $140,000.

The same figures show the offerings are much better in Cherokee than in Cobb County, which is more crowded and more expensive. Only one in 10 of Cobb County homes sold last year cost less than $140,000.

Mattie Keane, a Cherokee County sales agent with Prudential Georgia Realty, said the starter home market in Cherokee is not what it was when the county started growing, but she thinks good bargains can still be found.

A search of homes for sale in the greater Canton area showed 150 listing for less than $150,000.

She sold one home for $109,000 recently and another for $500,000.

"So the [less expensive] houses are there, but I do find that buyers right now that I'm seeing are buyers . . . in a higher bracket," Keane said.

Market pressures grow

Ronald Peiffer, the president of KB Home Atlanta, said the pressures that changed Cobb County are beginning to be felt in Cherokee.

"Twenty years ago, Cobb was a booming county. If you couldn't afford to live in Cobb, you went across the line to Cherokee," he said.

Now, Cobb has boomed itself out of much of the starter-home market.

"One thing in Cobb we as builders are running into is . . . there is just not a lot of land available, and what is available, the zoning is such that [you can't] build a cost-effective home. Say the land runs you $200,000 an acre, and you can only put two houses on there. Well, it's pretty hard to put a $140,000 house on that.

"It's real basic economics."

Dense zonings -- from three to seven homes an acre -- have kept KB building Cherokee County homes, which start in the $110,000 range.

The markets in counties such as Douglas and Paulding also continue to develop because people can get more home for the money there. The tradeoff is that buyers often have to travel farther to work, he said.

Peiffer said homeowners are becoming more accepting of higher density as a trade-off for easier commuting.

"Our buyers don't want to live in Waleska and drive to Cobb County to work, but they will live in a townhouse on Ga. 92 [in southern Cherokee County]," he said.

"We see a lot of younger people who say they don't need an acre of land and would rather have a small yard they can put some nice flowers in. They will accept higher density to live closer to work."

Peiffer sees the change as a return to town-type living of the kind he grew up knowing in Carey, Ohio, a town of 4,000.

"We lived on a quarter-acre lot, with just enough grass to play in . . . . I think we are getting back to that point," he said.