An Illinois apartment investor has reentered the Atlanta market, buying a prominent Midtown mid-rise complex from American International Group.

BES Axis Midtown Investor K, an LLC tied to Skokie-based Sherman Residential, paid $61.2M for the 218-unit building at 811 Juniper St. in November, according to city records. The project, which opened in 2017, was developed by Alliance Residential Co. before it was sold to AIG, Alliance Managing Director Todd Oglesby told Bisnow.

Alliance sold the property to AIG five years ago in a "transaction at the partnership level," Oglesby said in an email, declining to comment further.

The Fulton County Board of Assessors valued the complex, sandwiched between Fifth and Sixth streets and roughly a mile west of Tech Square, at $56.8M during the 2023 tax year, according to county records.

Sherman has since rebranded the building as Axis Midtown. The apartment investor didn't respond to Bisnow's requests for comment.

Axis Midtown is Sherman’s only Atlanta property, but it isn't its first. The company posted on LinkedIn that it was "grateful to be back in Atlanta" in announcing the deal, but it didn't indicate what its previous holdings were.

Sherman is reentering the Metro Atlanta market when a historic glut of new supply is boosting vacancies and lowering rents.

Some 7,500 units are set to be delivered through the third quarter inside the Interstate 285 Perimeter, the most in a 12-month period on record, with another 4,000 still under construction, according to Haddow & Co. data. In the third quarter of 2023, average rents in the region fell 3.3% to $2.37 per SF and vacancy topped 10%, according to Haddow.

CBRE said in a report late last year that new supply is expected to push rents downward in the Sun Belt through mid-2024.

While developers continue to deliver record numbers of apartments in Atlanta and beyond, the Federal Reserve’s series of interest rate hikes slowed new development, which is expected to bring supply and demand back in line this year.

In Metro Atlanta, the construction pipeline dropped nearly 12% in Q3 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, Cushman & Wakefield reported.