Don't expect the rash of new apartment building to stop anytime soon unless the music stops.

For the past few years, Buffalo developers have been putting up new apartment projects through the city like there's no tomorrow.

They're eager to feed both the pent-up demand from the past for new options, as well as the growing demand among young professionals and empty nesters to live in an urban setting with high-end amenities. And that's showed no signs of slowing down.

"It's befuddling me, I'll tell you," said Rocco Termini, owner of Signature Development Buffalo. "It's a mystery to me."

As in other cities, the wave started in the downtown core with long-neglected former warehouse and office buildings, as developers capitalized on historic and brownfield tax credits to convert older buildings to lively new uses, with "industrial chic" loft apartments and other unique features.

It then spread to the area around the burgeoning Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, where demand for more housing, restaurants and retail options has surged as the campus gained 5,000 more workers after the opening of Oishei Children's Hospital, Conventus and the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

And then it extended up the spine of Main Street, and west of the Medical Campus, into the Delaware District and even west of Richmond Avenue an area that was previously not thought of as desirable for investment and redevelopment.

Now, as the prices of real estate in those areas has soared because of the activity, developers are looking further afield, to North Buffalo's Hertel Avenue and Chandler Street, to Niagara Street on the West Side, to Seneca Street in South Buffalo, and to Jefferson Avenue, Fillmore Avenue, Broadway and the Northland Corridor on the East Side.

"There's a lot of apartments being built, and new ones every day, and everyone's competing with everybody," said William Paladino, CEO of Ellicott Development Co. "It's spreading to the East Side, which is great to see."

Almost every redevelopment project has been mixed-use, so that developers aren't putting all their eggs in one basket. Mixed-use also draws more people to those buildings from the outside, and makes them more attractive for people to live there. And in almost every case, residential apartments are a core component.

But two questions always come up: Is this sustainable? And where are the people coming from?

Developers say the answer is mixed, depending on the price point.

Rents for the new apartments are generally much higher than the traditional rates in Buffalo, with prices ranging from $1,000 to as much as $2,500. Those at the lower end of the spectrum up to about $1,400 or $1,500 are still strong, with very few vacancies and little turnover, said Termini, whose apartments are priced within that range or less. At that level, he said, that means it's sustainable.

"I don't know what everybody's vacancy rate is, but I know what mine is 1.5%, which is unbelievable," Termini said. "And you see more going up."

But that's not necessarily the case at higher levels, where developers bet that the market could now handle high-priced rents, especially among out-of-town people coming to Buffalo from much larger and more expensive cities like New York, where they are accustomed to paying a lot and getting far less. That's the market for doctors, lawyers, business executives or company owners.

And that's where developers like Paladino are getting worried. He says that "for the time being, it's pretty sustainable." But he cautions that the Buffalo market may be reaching or potentially exceeding in some cases its maximum cap right now on pricing.

"I'm not seeing pricing falling. I'm seeing it stabilize," Paladino said. "(But) I'm not seeing people raising rents, so that makes me think we're getting closer. If we start seeing prices drop, we're in trouble."

Both Termini and Paladino said the growth is still driven by a mixture of young professionals, newcomers, suburbanites moving into the city and empty-nesters downsizing from houses. In particular, the Medical Campus and M&T Bank's technology expansion are key factors.

However, a lot of the people coming in from out of town are either medical residents or workers on contracts, who are here for a fixed amount of time but aren't necessarily permanent. That's why they stay put once they're here.

"Most of the people that work in the Medical Campus, they've got a three- or four-year span. They don't want to move, because all they do is work. The last thing they want to do is upset their life and have to move. They're here to stay when they come here.

But it also means a continual churn. The problem, Paladino said, is that Buffalo's job market still isn't strong enough to draw more people here permanently, to ensure the apartments will be filled.

"We built the infrastructure, built up a lot of downtown, and we want things to continue to go well," Paladino said. "But for it to continue, we need to attract new companies and new talent to the area, for us to have some longevity. We need more job growth to sustain everything that's currently on line and planning to be built."

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New apartment growth in Buffalo shows no signs of stopping - Buffalo News