Cranes have become a familiar sight across America’s big cities, changing the face of neighborhoods. In our latest study, we looked at thousands of zip codes and ranked the top ones that underwent major transformations – building more apartments than entire cities in just five years. 

Atlanta’s Midtown zip code 30309 saw a construction boom matching the development pace seen in central neighborhoods in San Diego, CA, and New Jersey, NY. Furthermore, West Midtown’s zip code 30318 and Southeast of downtown zip code 30312 boast over 3,000 new apartments each. These massive changes ranked Atlanta among the elite top 50 zip codes that built the most units in a mere five years. 

Here are the highlights of apartment construction in Atlanta metro: 

• Zip code 30309 in Midtown is the 7th hottest in the nation, with 5,397 new apartments added in just five years. This translated to a growth of 65%, which led to a current inventory of 13,691 apartments. Most of the new inventory consists of high-end apartments. Renters in the area are mostly high-earning Millennials. 

• Moving to West Midtown, zip code 30318 ranks at #28 for apartment construction. 3,516 new apartments came online between 2018 and 2022 marking a 31.5% increase. To put things in perspective, this one zip code in Atlanta built twice as many apartments in five years as the entire city of Athens did in the same amount of time. 

• Following closely, zip code 30312 built 3,261 new units, snatching the #36 spot. Building thousands of apartments in 5 years is an even more impressive achievement considering that apartment buildings typically require 3-4 years for completion. 

• Zooming out at a national level, Washington, D.C., holds the first two spots, while Queens, NY takes third place. Here, over 7,000 new apartments were built in each zip code.