Investors have picked up a host of Atlanta apartments in recent weeks as demand for multifamily across the country remains robust despite the coronavirus pandemic.

JLL Income Property Trust purchased Siena Suwanee Town Center, a 240-unit luxury apartment project in the affluent suburb more than 30 miles north of Downtown Atlanta, for $70M, it announced last week. While JLL didn't disclose a seller, the project was developed by Terwilliger Pappas in 2019.

“This addition to our growing apartment portfolio fits extremely well with our suburban strategy to invest in amenity-rich, newer communities located in highly-rated school districts with high barriers to entry for new competition,” JLL Income Property Trust CEO Allan Swaringen said in a release.

Other recent apartment sales in Metro Atlanta include FCP's $20M purchase of Brookview Apartments, a 216-unit complex at 8460 Hospital Drive in Douglasville, and New York-based Cyclone Investment and Skywood Properties' purchase of 1035 Gateway Apartments in Marietta for $26.2M from Main Street Residential.

Main Street spent $2M improving the 214-unit Gateway property in 2018.

These deals cap an active investment market for apartments in Atlanta during the second half of 2020, according to Marcus & Millichap research, with out-of-state investors particularly eyeing lower-cost suburban apartment complexes in the region.

Investors' hunger for multifamily does not show signs of ebbing this year, according to a recent CBRE report. The global commercial real estate brokerage firm is projecting that investors will shell out $148B nationally for apartments in 2021, a 33% increase over 2020.