The sellers were motivated, and so was Raymond Starr.

In the early 1970s, he and his wife, Martha, paid $17,500 for a stone bungalow on Stovall Street in Atlanta's Reynoldstown community.

The sellers? White. The buyers? Black.

Now, with his house paid off, Starr looks along his tree-shaded street and counts the folks who, like him, have remained in the community for decades —- four families, he figures. In recent years, he said, six families have sold their homes at nifty profits and moved away.

The sellers? Black. The buyers? White.

Starr's curbside assessment underscores findings from federal agencies and demographic experts: Atlanta is getting bigger —- whiter, too.

Atlanta cracked the half-million mark in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The influx has boosted the city's population to a level not seen in nearly four decades, when Atlanta hovered just below 500,000, in 1970. Last year, that number totaled 519,145. In 1991, Atlanta's population hit a low of 393,314.

From 1970 to 1990, the city lost more than 100,000 people in a race to the suburbs fueled by the lure of cheaper housing, large yards, less crime and better schools with no mandatory busing for desegregation. People who could afford to leave the city packed and followed the interstates in all directions.

Like the biblical Lot, they did not look back.

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Recent numbers tell a different story. From 2000 to 2007, the city added almost 100,000 residents. Officials say these new Atlantans run the gamut —- empty-nesters and young marrieds, transfers from other cities and people tired of Atlanta's infamous commutes.

And, while most officials are reluctant to speak freely about white flight, they acknowledge that Atlanta is now regaining white folks. No large city in the nation has increased its percentage of white population as much as Atlanta, says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The nonprofit organization tracks public-policy issues.

"I don't want to say it is the people who fled the city 30 years ago," said Harvey Newman, chairman of public administration and urban studies at Georgia State University. "But it may be their children."

Starr, who still lives in Reynoldstown, is 59 and retired. He offers the same opinion. "They're young —- white," he said. "They're good neighbors."

They're people like Scott Stone, homeowner, entrepreneur and community activist.

He lives in a rehabbed home in Reynoldstown. Painted a deep mustard, it glows in the sunlight that falls across Kirkwood Avenue. From its gable flaps a banner that proclaims "Reynoldstown, Community On The Rise."

Stone, a transplant from Utah, is vice president of the Reynoldstown Civic Improvement League. He and his wife bought their home for $270,000 about three years ago to start their family.

"You could buy a house here if you could deal with the crime —- we're still dealing with some of that," Stone said. Prices have escalated since.

A few blocks away, Stone runs Park Grounds, a coffee shop with an adjacent tract where patrons let their dogs roam off-leash. He opened it in May 2007 in a building that had housed a succession of marginal enterprises in this community east of Cabbagetown.

Stone noticed others like him —- young, white people, mostly raised in the suburbs who were looking for something different from an intown community. So far, Stone's been right.

"The neighborhood," he said, "has been good to me."

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The times weren't always so good to intown neighborhoods, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). He has served 11 terms in Congress representing the district that includes Atlanta.

"There was a movement to be in the suburbs, where you had space," said Lewis. "You could get large homes for not a great deal of money."

Some people moved to protest the federal desegregation of public schools.

"You had white flight from the city of Atlanta," he said. "People started leaving for their children."

The departure got so pronounced that some homeowners carved up multistory, historic homes, turning them into boarding houses or apartments, said Angelo Fuster, aide to former Atlanta mayors Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young and Bill Campbell.

"In the 1970s, in Inman Park, you could have bought a mansion for a pittance," Fuster said.

The exodus left intown communities staggering, said Grant Park resident Cary Duncan. A retired bank auditor, he has lived in the community since he was a boy.

"Our schools have always been lacking; that was the reason people with young children chose to leave and go to other areas," said Duncan, 68. "But it had a devastating effect on the makeup of the city."

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That makeup is changing, says Frey, of the Brookings Institution.

Atlanta's share of white residents increased from 31 percent to 35 percent from 2000 to 2006. It may not seem like a lot, but it's significant. The majority of large cities saw no increase in white percentage at all, Frey said.

In 2000, Atlanta's white population stood at 130,222. Six years later, it was at 156,232 —- a jump of 26,010 people.

The white influx could signal changes in the city's administration, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

Voters, who have consistently elected black mayors since Maynard Jackson took office in 1973, could put a white person back in City Hall, he said.

It also means the city likely will remain firmly Democratic.

"The whites [moving in] are ideologically to the left of the Republicans, who are, and will remain, mostly in suburbia," Bullock said.

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The changes go beyond who is running the city. An influx of city residents invariably means a flood of new businesses, too.

Executives at the Kroger Co. and Publix noticed the building momentum in parts of Atlanta and responded with bricks and mortar.

Since 2002, Kroger has built three new stores in the city —- on Moreland Avenue in southeast Atlanta; at Headland Drive, near Langford Parkway in southwest Atlanta; and at Caroline Street in the Edgewood Retail District, which abuts Reynoldstown.

Atlanta has had a "growth spurt" that Publix couldn't ignore, said company spokeswoman Brenda Reid. In three years, it has built five intown stores.

"We're responding to a trend," she said. "People are moving to the city."

Smaller businesses have also opened to cater to new clientele.

In downtown Kirkwood, a chemical company, warehouse, and old theater have given way to a nail salon, sandwich shop and a wine bar on Hosea Williams Drive.

"It's a lot better than what it used to be," said Gary Caldwell, a driver for Stocks Funeral Home who works across the street.

"All the people you used to see walking the street late at night —- all that has changed," he said. People now sit out on the sidewalk at a pizza parlor on the corner, he said.

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The demographic changes in Kirkwood and Reynoldstown have not come without some controversy. As intown neighborhoods changed, there has been soul-searching, Fuster said.

Longtime residents get tax bills they can't afford because the value of their land is greater than the house they live in.

"There were racial issues as well as sexual-orientation issues," Fuster said of the transition in Reynoldstown.

"Neighbors complained that white gays were driving up property values," he said, but on balance, the newcomers made improvements "that were a lot better than what was there to begin with," he said.

A few neighborhoods over, the scene in East Atlanta attracted hairdresser and makeup artist Heather Morris. The Powder Springs native moved to New York City in 1999. Last year she bought a bungalow in East Atlanta because she thought it was hip.

"It was a lot like the scene in New York, with open-minded people," said Morris, 36, who sports full sleeves of tattoos on her arms and DayGlo-bright fuchsia nail polish on her toes. "It reminded me of my little neighborhood in Brooklyn."

Atlanta now is living up to its phoenix symbol —- rising, again, from ashes, said Fuster. Living in the city has sudden cache.

"Never underestimate the value of cool," Fuster said.

Staff writer Marcus Garner contributed to this article.