ATLANTA—Thad Ellis, senior vice president and Atlanta market leader for Cousins Properties, discovered something about Atlanta in the last commercial real estate meltdown. More than anything else, he says, residential business drives Atlanta.

Ellis will be on hand at RealShare Atlanta on April 30 at the Georgia Aquarium. Look for him on the Power Panel: The State of Atlanta Real Estate, in which he will discuss how economic developers plan to fuel continued investment.

“I don't even think those of us that had read the majority of the economic reports over the years—even people much smarter than I am at Georgia State and the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech—realized that the residential business was as much as 70% of our economy,” Ellis tells GlobeSt.com. “We're dependent on residential.”

As guilty as commercial real estate developers were to bring a glut of office space to the market, multifamily development came to a screeching halt in 2009 and 2010. Ellis says that translated to losses in the labor pool as workers went to Texas and other cities with well-documented job growth.

Multifamily developers have rushed into Atlanta to turn the story around and the inventory is filling up fast. Indeed, Marcus & Millchap reports that accelerating rental demand and a focus on urban living are driving development of multifamily assets in the core of Atlanta.

“Employment growth shows no signs of slowing as the metro continues to enjoy a strong influx of corporate relocations and expansions led by Comcast and Mercedes-Benz,” M&M reports. “Spurred by population growth trending far above the national average, builders are speeding development of mixed-use assets containing apartments.”

Despite the influx of new supply, M&M reports, many prime renter-age cohorts are still unable to afford single-family housing in urban locations where they desire to live. This demand has pushed up rents in the Old Fourth Ward, Midtown and West Atlanta, the firm says, where shopping and employment hubs are within a short commute. Robust demand for apartments throughout the metro will cause rents to rise 7.6%, the researchers predict, as demand outstrips supply by a wide margin.