ASHEVILLE - It's not your imagination.

A lot of apartments have been going up in the Asheville area over the past five years or so. And by a lot, we're talking thousands.

South Asheville and southern Buncombe County have been especially popular because of good schools, abundant shopping and restaurants, and proximity to downtown.

Residents there generally have a live-and-let-live attitude. But a proposal this spring by a Greensboro developer to put 230 apartments and 30 town homes on Overlook Road seemed to be a breaking point for some residents.

"We feel like as residents of South Asheville that we’ve gotten enough apartments," said Shannon Reese, who lives in the Oak Forest subdivision off Overlook and fought the developer's proposal. "Maybe it's time to go to other sections of Asheville where there's other land available."

While the developer did scrap the apartments plan, the big question lingers for many residents: Is the apartment boom ever going to die down?

The answer depends on whom you talk to, with some developers saying they're taking the foot off the gas for a while, especially in South Asheville, and others flatly stating that people will continue to move to Asheville, and they'll need apartments. One study shows nearly 5,000 units in the pipeline or being built in the coming two years in Buncombe County.

Famously tight market

The lack of apartments in Asheville and Buncombe County garnered enormous attention a few years ago, spurred by the 2014 Bowen Report that pegged the occupancy rate for apartments in the metro region at 99.2 percent, meaning very few vacancies were available. It called for the construction of 5,600 units to meet demand.

During the economic collapse of 2008-09, building applications for apartments in Asheville and Buncombe County showed almost no activity — no applications came into the city in 2009, for example.

But after the Great Recession, a lot of disgruntled homeowners who'd lost major equity in their homes shifted to renting, or renters eschewed homebuying for the same reason. Plus, many younger adults like their mobility and prefer renting. So developers started meeting that demand.

Asheville had 466 units in 2013, 344 the next year and a boom of 927 in 2015, then 403 in 2016. So far this year, applications total 286.

Buncombe County saw 80 multifamily applications in 2013, 351 the next year and 254 in 2015. Last year was the boom year for the county, 1,136 units permitted. This year has seen 28, through April.

After that building spate, the occupancy rate has dropped to 97.3 percent, still high but offering more breathing room, according to a Bowen's update in January. That report found Buncombe County had 337 vacant units in 2016, compared to just 99 three years ago.

While multiple companies have had a hand in building apartments over the past half-decade, no one entity has put up more than Southwood Realty out of Gastonia.

"Since 2011, we've put 1,136 units up, with 258 more under construction, and another 120 in development," said Vice President Will Ratchford, noting that the construction cost totaled about $111 million.

The 120 units in development are in Hendersonville, and the company built 252 units in Fletcher at The Seasons at Cane Creek. Still, that's 764 units in Buncombe County alone.

Ratchford said they're done for now in Buncombe County.

"I think the market is going to be saturated for a while," Ratchford said. "We've started to get some negativity about apartments."

Rents still rising

While all this building has resulted in more units and more competition — causing some apartments to offer attractive deals like a month's free rent to start — overall rents remain high. In fact, the Asheville market has seen seven straight months of rent increases after a decline in November 2016, according to Apartment List, a San Francisco company that tracks the apartment industry.

Over the past month, city rents have increased 0.9 percent, and they're up "moderately by 2.5 percent in comparison to the same time last year," the company noted. Asheville has the fourth-highest rent market in the state.

"Currently, median rents in Asheville stand at $860 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,080 for a two-bedroom," the analysis found, adding that other markets saw sharper rises. "Asheville's year-over-year rent growth lags the state average of 4.1 (percent), as well as the national average of 2.9."

Bowen National Research, which conducted the 2014 in-depth study, released the findings of an update in January. It found market-rate apartments saw a decline in the overall occupancy rate, but the "demand for such housing remains relatively strong."

Bowen also found that rents climbed, by an annual 4.4 percent in 2016. Buncombe County has 36 multifamily rental properties "in the development pipeline," the report states, "with approximately 4,647 units that could be added over the next couple of years." Most of those — 3,799 — are market rate apartments.

For affordable rentals, such as tax credit and government-subsidized units, occupancy remains near 100 percent, "and there remains pent-up demand for such housing," Bowen said. In fact, it found that none of the 2,348 government-subsidized units was available in Buncombe, as waiting lists abound.

That jibes with what public housing authorities and affordable housing builders have been saying for years — they're at capacity.

At Givens Estates, CEO Ken Partin can tell you all about the demand for affordable apartments.

Using federal Housing and Urban Development funds, tax credits and Duke Endowment funding, as well as its own funds, the retirement community is in the midst of building a $30 million development on Gerber Road in South Asheville that is designated affordable units for older adults. Phase I, with 120 units, just opened.

"We’ll have 262 new apartments over there, and we could’ve filled two or three times that number," Partin said. "There's a huge waiting list on the apartments that just opened up."

He acknowledges that all apartments add traffic and impact infrastructure, but notes with elderly residents it tends to be less. He's sympathetic to residents tired of the traffic and building, but he also maintains that the dearth of affordable units means the area just has to find a way to accommodate the growth.

"Anytime you can get funding for affordable housing, you almost have to be an advocate for it," Partin said. "We're talking about people, in many cases, who are either homeless or, if not, living in the poorest of conditions. So anything we can do to improve affordable housing, the inventory or stock, we need to try to do."

Called Givens Gerber Park, the apartments' first phase has income limits of $25,800 for one person and $29,460 for two persons, with apartments for those age 55 and older. Rents for one-bedroom units range from $255-$514 monthly, while two bedrooms go for $315-$624 a month.

While some say developers should concentrate more efforts on affordable housing, that's not realistic, partly because of land and development costs in the mountains, and partly because of financing and timetables.

"It probably took us 36 months longer to do this project (than a market rate development)," Partin said of Givens Gerber Park, noting that they went through two competitive applications through HUD, losing out the first time. "It’s a long process, it’s arduous, and lot of developers are just not going to do that."

Also, returns on investments "are very modest," Partin said, further inhibiting enthusiasm for affordable apartment building.

They're still coming

While some companies may slow apartment building, it's not like people are going to stop moving here. Asheville has grown every year for the past 40 years, a slow steady expansion that doesn't outpace larger cities but does come from people moving here rather than births, according to Tom Tveidt, founder of Syneva Economics in Asheville.

The city's population is pushing 90,000, and it remains a mecca for tourists and retirees. Looking at Census data covering 2010-16, Tveidt found that in the four metro counties — Buncombe, Henderson, Haywood and Madison — essentially all of the net population change is the result of people moving in.

Buncombe had a gain of 884 people from births outpacing deaths, but the other three counties had negative numbers in the "natural gain" department. Overall, 97 percent are newcomers, Tveidt said earlier this year.

"That's been the case for at least the last decade," he said.

So with that population will come more apartment proposals, and Ratchford knows that will result in more friction between homeowners and developers. He likens the resistance to economic development and how residents always want industry to come to a community, but no one wants to live next to it.

While apartments don't have that kind of impact, they do affect traffic and schools, and they often go in on previously wooded property near single-family homes.

"Somebody has to live beside it, so it’s fine for it to happen, but not in my backyard," Ratchford said. "Since apartments tend to go in next to single-family backyards, there’s your problem."

Reese said she is not anti-apartments at all, but she felt strongly the planned units for Overlook Road — a two-lane, steep roadway that connects Long Shoals and Hendersonville roads — had enough traffic already, with 9,000 vehicles a day. Also, nearby Estes Elementary School, where Reese is on the PTA board, had nearly 800 students last year.

Reese stressed that people need places to live, and they need to be affordable, but she also wants to see development controlled.

"I don't have the answers, but there needs to be some thought that goes into development," she said. "It can't just be, 'Hey, there's a piece of property that's empty; let's build on it.'"

Her point is that, "Perhaps it's time for developers to look to less developed parts of Buncombe County."

That's exactly what developer Rusty Pulliam expects to happen. He's been involved in the construction of Weirbridge Village on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville, which put 280 units on a former farm, as well as 180 units at The Retreat at Hunt Hill near downtown Asheville.

Pulliam has a project in the works to build 272 units at the intersection of Mills Gap and Sweeten Creek roads by midsummer 2019, a development that got residents riled about traffic. The developer made some concessions, and residents were somewhat mollified because Sweeten Creek Road is slated for widening.

South Asheville and southern Buncombe County have been magnets for apartments and residential development in general, Pulliam said, because they have excellent schools, relatively flat land, and an industrial and commercial base that provides a lot of jobs. While he acknowledges that South Asheville has seen a lot of apartment development and it may slow some in that area, he doesn't see local apartment building slowing overall.

"I can tell you my real estate company is working with several other multifamily developers who are looking at (local) properties and putting in contracts to build more," Pulliam said. "South Asheville will probably slow down a little, but I know people are in town right now looking north, west and east."

Pulliam cited a report that came out in June, conducted for the National Multifamily Housing Council, that states America will see a demand for 4.6 million more apartments by 2030, including demand for 220,000 in North Carolina.

"That kind of makes your eyes open up and say, 'Wow,'" Pulliam said, noting that most apartments are built in metro areas. "If they're anticipating Asheville having this kind of growth, then multifamily is going to stay strong."

Applications for apartment construction, city of Asheville

2008 — 80

2009 — 0

2010 — 352

2011 — 60

2012 — 334

2013 — 466

2014 — 344

2015 — 927

2016 — 403

2017 — 286

Source: City of Asheville Planning Department

Multi-family construction permits, Buncombe County*

2013 — 80

2014 — 351

2015 — 254

2016 — 1,136

2017 (through April) — 28

Source: Buncombe County Permits and Inspections. * Unit totals may not be complete, as some are listed under "commercial shells."