By Frank Norton
Norton Real Estate
GAINESVILLE, Ga. | In North Georgia, there are three kinds of public lakes you could classify:
- The Georgia Power lakes: Lakes Burton, Rabun, Seed, Tugalo, Tallulah Falls Lake, Yonah and Oconee;
- The TVA lakes: Blue Ridge, Nottely, Nickajack, Chattuge, Chickamauga; and
- The Corps of Engineer lakes: Lake Lanier, Allatoona, Hartwell, Carters and Lake Russell.
The evolution of real estate and the lakes revolved around power. Lake Rabun was first. It was built in 1915 by the predecessor to Georgia Power. A little-known fact is they paid $15 per acre for land under Burton, most likely Rabun and Seed. Lake Seed was built in 1927 and to clear the land workers were paid 50 cents a day. Today, Lakes Burton, Rabun and Seed have some of the highest-priced real estate in the Georgia.
Lake Lanier originated as a WPA project. The reason it has such varying shoreline distances is because they took aerial photographs in the 1930s, and some of those may have been blurry, so they used straight lines. The project was put on hold until after World War II. They bought 58,000 acres around Hall, Forsyth, Dawson, Lumpkin and Gwinnett counties, paying an average of $50 per acre. Lake Lanier reached full pool in 1958 and was intended mainly for power and flood control of the Chattahoochee. Shortly after, folks recognized the recreational aspects of the lake. My father and grandfather sold some of the first lakefront lots for $2,500 per acre. Since that time our firm has sold more lake property than any other.
Lake Lanier was a “second home” market at first, mostly from Atlanta, but the farmers were still farming. By the 1970s, 80 percent of Lake Lanier were second homes but only 20 percent were full-time residents, mostly in south Hall County, some in the city of Gainesville, and north Hall County. Forsyth and Dawson counties were called a “cottage market.”
Living on Lanier wasn’t a major factor until late 1988, That’s when BellSouth merged our phone area code with Atlanta’s 404 and 770, creating seamless calls. With that one decision, Lake Lanier truly became part of Metro Atlanta, allowing people to call their next-door neighbor with a different area code, or call their friends within the perimeter, without long-distance tolls. In the following 10 years, we saw a dramatic migration of folks from Atlanta, and the calculations shifted. Fast forward, we now have 80-20 percent full time residents.
In those 30 years, we started seeing major lake community developments and shrinking farms. Some may even remember there were mobile homes dotting the shoreline of Forsyth and Dawson counties. Those have all gone away.
Boat docks were capped by the Corps of Engineers at 10,615 – which means if you don’t have one, you’re never going to get one or you can be on a waiting list of hundreds of people. In 2015, a house on Lake Lanier traded at $9.5 million. That’s one of those houses that has everything but a gift shop. And then in 2025, we saw a house trade at $5 million.
Lake Lanier also provides huge tax revenue. People don’t understand that because of the tax revenue of Lake Burton, Rabun and Seed, Rabun County has great schools and a strong county budget. These taxes are paid by the people who live elsewhere and vacation in Rabun. They don’t borrow library books, rarely have a fire emergency and are small users of services.
Lake Lanier is still the most visited man-made lake in the United States – but not the largest in Georgia. That would be Clark Hill. Blue Ridge and Hiawassee are vibrant economies because of the lakes and, of course, Rabun, Seed and Burton have been a strong part of the recreational and attractiveness of the North Georgia Mountains.
Today over 50 percent of the homes on Burton/Rabun and Seed now sell for over a million dollars. We’re projecting that 60 percent on Lake Lanier will be over a million dollars.
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