ANDY SHARP / Staff It took four years, several false starts and help from Cobb Housing Inc. for John Jones to buy a house in Marietta.   Related: COMPARE PRICES BY ZIP CODE • Complete Home Report 2004

He smiles broadly and says it feels good for a man to be in a house that he is buying rather than renting.

Finally.

"It took about four years to get all the pieces together," Jones said.

During that time, he looked for houses to buy, lost earnest money when he made a couple of offers that fell through, and nearly had given up.

It took a lot of trying by Jones, who drives a bus for Cobb Community Transit, and a little luck in discovering Cobb Housing Inc. to finally buy a house. The nonprofit organization educated him about the closing process, helped him straighten out his finances so he could get a down payment and helped him find a house in Marietta that he could afford.

Affordability is the key for many workers in Cobb County, and that key is getting harder for police officers, teachers, young professionals, single-income families and blue-collar workers to put their hands on. Median home prices in Cobb County are surging.

In late 1999 and early 2000, the median home price was $146,000, which is the upper end of affordability for a family with a low to modest income. That would be a family of four making about $57,000 a year, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standards.

In 2003, the median home sales price in the county increased to $179,900, according to Smart Numbers, an Atlanta company that tracks home sales and costs. That home would be out of reach for many workers in Cobb County, including those on whom the public calls every day for help.

A police officer in Cobb starts at $33,000 a year; a first-year teacher's salary begins at $34,500; a beginning CCT bus driver makes $20,500 a year.

Prices have jumped countywide, and four ZIP codes in central and east Cobb were in the top 20 for metro Atlanta's steepest one-year increases, by percentage, Smart Numbers' data show.

One of the four, ZIP code 30060, showed the second-highest increase for new homes among more than 250 ZIP codes studied in a 16-county region. There, the median price jumped 25 percent from $171,100 to $214,500.

The remaining three, 30064, 30062 and 30168, showed increases ranging from 14 percent to 23 percent, according to Smart Numbers.

Three other Cobb ZIP codes, 30339, 30075 and 30080 -- near Roswell and along the Chattahoochee River -- are in the region's top 20 for median price increases for previously owned homes. They went up between 14 percent and 35 percent.

Ralph Knight, the director of Cobb Housing Inc., summed up the Cobb home market for those of modest income: "It's tough."

Expect less or drive

Cobb Housing holds seminars to educate buyers, helps some get down payment grants, and builds and restores modest homes like the one Jones moved into. The organization last year helped 45 people buy houses.

There are homes out there that first-timers and people of modest income can afford, "But the bottom line is that they have to lower their expectations," Knight said. An affordable, two-story suburban home with a white picket fence and a lot of yard is a rare find. But buyers still can get in the door of townhouses, cluster homes and older single-family homes.

The good news, Knight said, is that low interest rates and new and expanding government and private programs to grant first-time buyers the critical down payment are keeping some Cobb buyers in the game.

Those who find themselves priced out or disappointed with what is available have another option: They can move out farther where more house can be had for the money, Knight said.

Less land, higher prices

If the past 20 years were about metro Atlanta's expansion outward, the next 20 may be about belt-tightening -- building denser infill subdivisions and homes on smaller lots.

Ronald Peiffer, president of KB Homes Atlanta, said: "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. That is what has happened in east and central Cobb, and we are seeing the same thing in west Cobb now."

Affordable alternatives are townhouses, cluster houses and denser subdivisions. Those are beginning to pop up more frequently in Cobb County and elsewhere.

KB, which targets starter-home buyers in some of its subdivisions, has no projects in Cobb but several in Cherokee and other outlying counties.

Even their homes in Cherokee have been hit by price creep and more density, Peiffer said. They range from $110,000 to more than $140,000 and have three to seven homes per acre, a density that would be found only in apartment complexes or trailer parks in Cherokee 10 years ago.

Buyers start to adapt

The increase in house prices is beginning to change people's buying and living preferences, Peiffer said. Homeowners are becoming more accepting of higher density as long as it cuts down the commute.

"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 like 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.