A 10-acre site at the northeast corner of Buford Drive and Laurel Crossing Parkway in Buford is now home to Autry at Tulip Grove, a 300-unit luxury apartment community that developer Thompson Thrift says it expects to welcome its first residents to in January 2027. The project is moving forward at a moment when apartment builders across metro Atlanta are doing the opposite, pulling back sharply as elevated vacancy and higher capital costs make new projects harder to pencil out.
That contrast is at the center of a report from CoStar, which describes developers continuing to build apartments northeast of Atlanta even as construction slows elsewhere. CoStar’s analysis points to Gwinnett’s renter demand, described as among the strongest in the region, as one reason builders are still breaking ground there while projects stall in other parts of Atlanta.
Thompson Thrift’s own announcement, made in September 2025, put the address at 1325 Laurel Crossing Parkway NE and described the Thompson Thrift project as a luxury 300-unit community in the Atlanta suburb of Buford. The company cited population growth in the immediate area, noting that the population within three miles of the site had grown 31.9% over the previous 15 years. Autry at Tulip Grove marks Thompson Thrift’s third ground-up development in Georgia, according to Multi-Housing News.
A Regional Pipeline That Keeps Shrinking
The Buford project is advancing against a backdrop of broadly declining apartment construction across metro Atlanta. A Q3 2026 market report found that Atlanta multifamily completions totaled 10,955 units over the trailing 12 months, down 43% from the prior period, while trailing-12-month absorption fell 64% year over year to 10,580 units, down from 29,175 a year earlier, the report notes. Despite that slowdown, the report found that apartments under construction equaled 9.3% of East Gwinnett County’s inventory, the highest concentration among the areas it highlighted, underscoring how localized the region’s remaining building activity has become.
Even with that East Gwinnett concentration, the overall Atlanta pipeline remains large relative to current demand: the report put the region’s development pipeline at 18,191 units, equal to about seven quarters of absorption at the trailing pace. Northmarq projected approximately 9,800 units would come online next year, well below the levels recorded in the prior two years.
Nearby Projects Point to Gwinnett’s Staying Power
Buford isn’t the only nearby city seeing apartment construction push forward. In Lawrenceville, RangeWater broke ground on The Greene, a 300-unit multifamily project at 1032 Buford Drive, according to Urbanize Atlanta. Together, the developments suggest builders still see enough demand in this corner of the region to keep moving forward even as the broader Atlanta apartment market cools.
