Delivering more than 1,700 luxury apartment units in Metro Atlanta in the next 12 months does not scare one multifamily developer.

Houston-based Hanover Co. has five apartment projects under construction in the metro region at a time when developers are pushing forth in excess of 11,000 units. “That doesn't scare us. We're big believers in Atlanta,” Hanover partner Adam Harbin told our audience during Bisnow's Buckhead Update event on Feb. 22.

Like other multifamily players, Hanover has been scouring the metro area for sites as the Atlanta job engine revved back to life following the Great Recession. “Once that resumed and once the job growth story in Atlanta came back ... I think it was a race to get sites,” Harbin said.

The Hanover project list includes:

• Hanover Village, a 353-unit high-rise project next to Buckhead Theatre

• Hanover West Peachtree, a 332-unit, six-story mid-rise apartment complex at 10th and West Peachtree streets

• Hanover Midtown, a 300-story, 342-unit project at 7th and Peachtree streets

• Hanover East Paces, a 375-unit project on Pharr Road in Buckhead Village

• Hanover Perimeter, a 384-unit project off Hammond Drive in Sandy Springs.

Harbin — part of a panel focused on Buckhead's live/work/play lifestyle that included Skyline PR's Tony Wilbert, Wood Partners' Bennett Sands, Alliance Residential's Todd Oglesby and Related Development's Ed Allen — said there is a sixth project in the works, but declined to offer any details as of press time.

Harbin said job growth in the metro area is “for the first time in its history” outpacing apartment supply. (Atlanta added more than 68,000 jobs last year with an unemployment rate that dipped below 5%.) Couple that with the fact that the new stock of apartments is pushing toward $3/SF rents and development is appealing. “You have renters by choice. That's fueled not only by the caliber of developments coming online, but also the caliber of jobs,” he said.