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Despite a recent surge of apartment construction in the Portland market, industry experts say another is coming.

Real estate professionals on Wednesday packed a room at the Multnomah Athletic Club to learn about Multifamily NW’s spring 2014 market update. With super-low vacancy rates and double-digit rental rate increases, Portland is due to receive a new wave of multifamily construction, according to Multifamily NW and its partners.

“To say that apartment projects are coming out of the woodwork I think would be an understatement,” said Mark Barry of Barry & Associates, a local real estate appraisal firm that provides apartment construction data as part of Multifamily NW’s report.

Barry said that a year ago approximately 7,500 proposed apartment units were in the planning stages. Now, he expects to see nearly 14,000 delivered by the end of 2015 – an 80 percent increase since last spring. But developers weren’t sitting idle in 2013; indeed, they pulled permits for 5,821 new units – 2,500 more than in 2012.

The vast majority of those projects likely aren’t speculative, according to Barry & Associates. It identified the preponderance of that activity via permit applications and requests for design assistance.

“This typically means that a significant amount of money has already been spent on acquiring land, developing drawings, commissioning market studies, and other pre-construction related costs,” Barry & Associates reported. “Most of the projects taken to this level will get built.”

Of the nearly 14,000 units on the horizon, 6,500 are under construction – 65 percent in the urban core. Fueling that activity is a population that has grown slowly since the height of the recession, and employment that’s rebounded significantly.

“For years I have resisted the urge to apologize when I talk about the state of the economy,” said Amy Vander Vliet, a regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department. “Today, I may need to apologize for not being negative enough … the economic waiting game that we’ve been playing for years now is over. Portland has made a full recovery. We’ve finally arrived.”

While Oregon lost approximately 80,000 jobs during the recession, Vander Vliet said the state recovered those positions late last year. She added that nearly every industry was seeing year-over-year growth. Additionally, after the unemployment hit a peak of approximately 11 percent in 2009, it’s now hovering around 6 percent.

Barry & Associates reports that 75,000 people moved to Portland between 2009 and 2012; however, apartment development then was at a near standstill. Combined with fallout from the housing bubble, conditions were ripe for the apartment market to become red-hot.

According to Barry & Associates, while permits were issued for 7,400 units from 2009 to 2012, demand existed for at least 11,000. As such, the vacancy rate quickly dropped from nearly 6 percent to less than 3 percent in some areas. That has led to rising rents: Rates overall are up more than 11 percent from the same time last year, according to Multifamily NW.

The most expensive areas, reportedly, are downtown and Northwest Portland, where average rents are $1.93 and $1.77 per square foot, respectively.

Meanwhile, rents in inner and central southeast neighborhoods increased 9 cents from last fall to $1.26 per square foot; rents in inner and central northeast neighborhoods increased a cent to $1.28 per square foot; and rents in North Portland neighborhoods increased 26 cents to $1.34 per square foot.

Such increases are expected to taper as thousands of new units join the market, but Barry doesn’t foresee overbuilding. His company predicts apartment vacancy to reach as high as 5.25 percent by late 2015 (5 percent is generally considered a balanced market between tenants and landlords).

Barry said there is time left in the current real estate cycle for new development, and that is attracting apartment brokers, building managers and general contractors alike. He did, however, offer one tongue-and-cheek warning sign.

“The thing you really have to watch out for is if you get any appraisers that start getting involved with apartment development,” he joked. “Then you know it’s way too late and it’s already been overbuilt.”