There are 80,000 apartments under construction throughout Australia.

CommBank head of property strategy and research Kevin Stanley said the figures showed that Australia was enjoying the biggest apartment development boom in its history and Melbourne was leading the charge.

There are 1846 apartments under construction in Melbourne which are expected to be completed this year, while an additional 4432 are expected to be finished in 2017.

Demand for apartments is not expected to ease any time soon with another 117,000 units either approved or being marketed.

Mr Stanley said while the Melbourne figures appeared high, they came off a fairly low base a few years ago.

Apartments are now selling in the Boulevard Residences which are part of the Opera Melbourne apartment development at St Kilda Road. Picture: realestate.com.auSource:Supplied

There are 123,622 apartments proposed for Melbourne across 734 projects.

Sydney has 88,013 apartments proposed and Brisbane has 34,353.

In Perth there are 14,643 apartments planned and 6450 in Adelaide.

Of those already under construction the majority are either in the Melbourne CBD or Brisbane’s inner city suburbs including Newstead where 1577 are set to be finished this year and South Brisbane which will add 973 new apartments.

Mr Stanley said the large number of new apartments in Melbourne and Brisbane could lead to increased vacancies which could take some time to change.

Haven is one of the many new apartment developers in inner Brisbane suburbs. Picture: realestate.com.auSource:Supplied

He said it was interesting to see Adelaide came in at number six on the list for the number apartments being built this year, as it was a capital city which had not previously had a lot of unit development.

“Adelaide is creating a whole new market of high density, high rise apartment buildings, tapping into pent up demand among owner occupiers and investors, particularly in the inner city area,’’ he said.

Estimated apartment completions 2016. *under construction.

Estimated apartment completions 2017. *under construction.

Mr Stanley said apartments now made up about 46 per cent of all dwelling approvals compared to 32 per cent in 2005.

He said the suburbs which made the top 20 list for apartment construction had three things in common.

“They seem to have very good accessibility to jobs and to transport and to amenity, those three sort of things seem to come together in each of these locations and that is what is attracting developers and in the end occupiers,’’ he said.

“I think Australian cities have not really seen a building boom like this before, in size and in type. What will probably happen is that when the buildings are completed and those who invested in the apartments put them on the market you will find that people move into these areas from other places and from older buildings into the new buildings. There is a prospect of vacancies rising, that is not a forecast it is actually happening in some cities.

“It is natural when you see a high concentration of completions you will see vacancy rates rise and in a lot of cases it take two or three years to come back down.’’