Atlanta Metro Property Leads (DeKalb County)

The exact signal we pull here

DeKalb County publishes its code-enforcement caseload as an ArcGIS feature service: Hansen/CodeEnforcementCasesInspections/FeatureServer/0 (the "Code Cases" layer) on dcgis.dekalbcountyga.gov. Layer 1 of the same service carries the inspections.

The signal is an open DeKalb County code-enforcement case — status = 'Open', dated by addedDateTime. A separate processState field carries the stage the case has reached: Investigation, Citation, and so on.

Addresses come through complete with city, state and ZIP in address_displayText — for example 5064 GALLEON XING DECATUR GA 30035.

3,378

open cases (3,375 with a usable address) out of 30,188 in the layer

1,368

cases opened in the trailing 30 days to 6 Aug 2026

292

open cases carrying an Atlanta mailing address

DeKalb refreshes same-day: max(addedDateTime) was 6 August 2026 at 16:14 when we probed it. Documented test run: --city Atlanta --days 30 --limit 60 → 60 raw rows in, 60 unique properties out — a perfect run, and the only one of the six markets where a 60-row pull produced zero duplicates.

The escalation column: court summons

Not every open case sits at the same stage, and DeKalb tells you which ones have escalated. The case file carries a court-summons marker (SUMM) — the county has stopped writing letters and put a date in front of a court.

5,789

court-summons (SUMM) cases in the file, all-time

~4,366

of those attached to cases that are currently open

~46

new cases a day, visible on the API the same day

Those counts were run against the live service on 6 August 2026. Practically: a summons row is an owner with a court date and a cost, which is a materially different conversation from an owner who has just had an inspector knock.

Real rows from the 6 August 2026 pull

Unedited output, filed the same day we pulled it.

deedstake_atlanta_20260806.csv

Signal	Date filed	Address	Issue	Case stage	Owner	Phone
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	5064 Galleon Xing Decatur GA 30035	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	491 Kenridge Cir Stone Mountain GA 30083	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	4660 Lake Hill Trl Ellenwood GA 30294	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	2040 Cherrybrook Dr Decatur GA 30032	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	2457 Tolliver Hills Ln Ellenwood GA 30294	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████
VIOLATION	2026-08-06	1639 Atherton Dr Decatur GA 30035	Code Enforcement	Investigation	████████ ███████	(███) ███-████

Source: DeKalb County ArcGIS Hansen/CodeEnforcementCasesInspections/FeatureServer/0 ("Code Cases"), filtered to status='Open', pulled 6 August 2026.
Owner and phone are blanked on purpose. Those two columns are the skip-trace step we add before delivery; we redact them in a public sample rather than publish a named person's phone number on the open web. Your delivered file has them filled in.

What an investor actually does with this file

DeKalb's edge is that it is both same-day and clean — you get a real filing date and almost no duplication. Work it like a fresh-lead feed.

Newest first. 1,368 cases opened in the last 30 days is roughly ~46 a day. A case opened this week is an owner who has just been contacted by the county.
Read processState, not just status. "Investigation" is early; "Citation" means the county has issued something formal. Citation-stage cases are the ones with a cost and a clock. A summons row is further along that same ladder.
Pick your sub-market by city label. Decatur 30032/30035, Ellenwood 30294, Stone Mountain 30083 and Lithonia are four genuinely different price points and rent profiles. Filter to the ones your buy box actually covers before you dial anything.
Verify the street line, not the city label. DeKalb's own city labels are occasionally wrong (see the limits below). The street and number are reliable; treat the city name as a hint.
Sort by the absentee flag. Derived at skip-trace time from the mailing address versus the property address. DeKalb has heavy out-of-state landlord ownership, which makes this filter unusually productive here.

The honest limits in the Atlanta metro

This is DeKalb County, not the City of Atlanta. The City of Atlanta publishes no code-enforcement dataset. We checked on 6 August 2026: the DPCD open-data hub carries 57 datasets and none of them is code enforcement, gis.atlantaga.gov/dpcd/rest/services exposes none, and opendata.atlantaga.gov was unreachable. DeKalb covers Decatur, Stone Mountain, Tucker, Ellenwood, Lithonia, Clarkston, Chamblee and roughly 10% of the City of Atlanta — the part inside DeKalb's boundary. We say "Atlanta metro / DeKalb County" everywhere, and we will never say "City of Atlanta".

Fulton County — the larger half of Atlanta — is not covered either. Fulton's open-data hub surfaces only suburb feeds (Alpharetta at 156 rows, Johns Creek). There is no county-wide Fulton code-enforcement feed we can honestly pull. If your buy box is Fulton, tell us and we will say no rather than sell you DeKalb data and hope.

The issue text is often just "Code Enforcement". DeKalb's codeViolations_0__description field is only sometimes populated, so many rows arrive without a specific violation description. Like Dallas, that means your opener has to ask what the case is about rather than assume.

City labels are occasionally wrong; street lines are not. One sampled row read 1745 Coventry Rd Atlanta GA 30307, a city/ZIP combination the Census geocoder could not match. The street itself resolves at 1745 Coventry Rd, Decatur GA 30030. The property is real; DeKalb's city label was off. Our address spot-check across twelve DeKalb rows matched 11 of 12 for exactly this reason.

An open case is a signal, not a guarantee of distress. Plenty of owners resolve the case and never think about selling. The signal works on volume, stage and timing, not on certainty about any one house.

The county does not publish the owner. Name, phone and mailing address come from a licensed skip-trace provider, and skip-trace matching is probabilistic. Some rows come back with no phone. We do not charge you for a match rate we cannot promise. Our measured point-in-polygon owner join in DeKalb is 100%, with 67% of those flagged absentee — that is owner-of-record from the parcel geometry, which is not the same thing as a working phone number.

Public records are not consent to call. You own TCPA and Do Not Call compliance before you dial — see our Terms of Service, §2.3.

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