Griffin Homes for Sale

What Griffin is like

Spalding County was created in 1851 out of parts of Fayette, Henry and Pike counties, and named for Thomas Spalding, a statesman and planter from coastal Georgia. It covers about 198 square miles and sits roughly 40 miles south of Atlanta, at the southern edge of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Griffin, the county seat, was settled in the mid-1820s and was called Pleasant Grove until 1841. In 1840 the banker and railroad president Lewis Lawrence Griffin bought 800 acres and laid out a town there; the residents renamed it for him, and it was incorporated in 1843, while the area was still part of Pike County. The 2020 census counted 23,478 residents.

It is a town built by the railroad and then by textiles, and it reads that way: a real downtown grid, older housing stock close in, industrial land, and newer subdivisions further out. That is a different proposition from the planned suburbs further north, and buyers who like Griffin tend to like it for exactly that reason.

Downtown and the historic district

The Griffin Commercial Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places, roughly bounded by Central Alley, Sixth Street, Taylor Street and Eighth Street. The city runs a monthly Second Saturday event series along South Hill Street – markets, a chili cook-off, live music – which is the easiest way to see the downtown working rather than just look at it.

North of downtown is the Stonewall Confederate Cemetery and Memorial Park, established by local women after the Atlanta and Jonesboro campaigns of 1864; more than 500 Confederate soldiers and one Union soldier are buried there.

The UGA campus and local employers

The University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences runs a campus in Griffin. The UGA Griffin Campus houses research facilities including the Center for Food Safety, the Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center and the Center for Urban Agriculture, and the local community helped fund its Student Learning Center. Southern Crescent Technical College also has a campus in the city.

Among the larger employers in Griffin are Spalding Regional Hospital, Caterpillar and the school system itself. For buyers, the practical point is that Griffin is not purely a bedroom town: a significant number of people who live here also work here, which is not true of every place in this guide.

Parks

City Park on Camp Northern Road is about 200 acres and includes a skate park, tennis courts, a pool and an 18-hole golf course – an unusual amount of municipal recreation for a city this size.

On the west side, Spalding County maintains Wyomia Tyus Olympic Park on Cowan Road, named for the Olympic sprinter from Griffin. It is a regional sports venue with baseball, soccer and pickleball complexes, a walking track and a cross-country trail.

One local event worth knowing about as a matter of fact rather than fear: an EF3 tornado crossed the western part of Griffin on January 12, 2023, injuring 18 people. Some of that area has been rebuilt since. If you are buying on the west side, ask about the history of a specific property.

Schools

Public schools are run by the Griffin-Spalding County School System, which covers the whole county with eleven elementary schools, four middle schools and three high schools. The two comprehensive high schools are Griffin High School on West Poplar Street and Spalding High School on Wilson Road.

Attendance follows the address, so confirm the zoned schools for a particular house with the district, and get current performance information from the district or the Georgia Department of Education rather than from a listing.

Getting around

US-19/41 is the main north-south road: north through Hampton and Clayton County toward Atlanta, south toward Barnesville. Highway 16 crosses east and west – west toward Senoia and Newnan, east toward Jackson. Highway 155 runs northeast toward McDonough and I-75.

Highway 92 begins in Griffin and runs north through Woolsey into Fayetteville, which is the usual route between Griffin and the Fayette County towns, and on through Fairburn. There is no interstate in Spalding County itself; I-75 is reached via Highway 155 or Highway 16 east, and I-85 via Newnan.

Because the city is about 40 miles out, the commute is the thing to test first. If you are considering Griffin because of what your money buys here, drive your actual route at your actual hour before you decide.

Nearby towns

• Hampton
• McDonough
• Fayetteville
• Jonesboro