Will the surge in apartment construction bring down now soaring rents? If recent history is any indication, don’t bet on it.

In fact, ever-higher rents may be a fact of life, both in the Boston area and across the Bay State, despite all the new construction we are seeing. And the biggest reason for this is not how many units are in the pipeline, but rather what kinds of apartments are actually getting built.

Apartment developments currently under way are heavily skewed towards the luxury end of the scale, with units and prices aimed at the relatively affluent and footloose.

“Whether the construction of high-end units is going to impact the rest of the market, I am skeptical on that,” said Thomas Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance. “High-end construction draws new people into the city, but I don’t know whether it does a heck of a lot to trickle down to the more low- and moderate-income neighborhoods of the city.”

Yes, there is a school of thought that says any new construction is good, even at the very high end of the market – an idea that’s difficult to entirely dismiss out of hand.

But for subscribers to the theory that a rising tide lifts all boats, one need only use the recent condo boom as a sobering example that an increase in supply doesn’t necessarily translate into a far-reaching moderation in prices.

Boom, No Bust

The Back Bay, South End and Beacon Hill experienced a condo boom to end all condo booms over the past decade.

A new condo tower took shape seemingly on just about every high-priced street corner, with the Mandarin, Clarendon and W Boston just some of the additions to the Boston skyline.

But while we were eventually left with a glut of high-priced units – sales at the W Boston and 45 Province became embarrassingly slow once the economy hit the skids in 2008 – there was no big collapse in prices.

In fact, downtown condo prices have kept on rising and sales are also perking up.

It’s a trend that bucks conventional wisdom, which would have predicted a big drop in prices, with the benefits cascading all the way down the housing ladder to neighborhoods across the city.

However, whatever challenges the downtown luxury market has encountered, there have been no price collapses and definitely no larger, market-spanning shockwave spreading out to other neighborhoods, from East Boston to Roxbury.

Apparently, what happens in the downtown condo market stays downtown.

“They are such different markets it is somewhat like operating in parallel universes,” Callahan notes, comparing downtown Boston real estate with that of the city’s main residential neighborhoods.

Limited Market

Today, more than a thousand – mostly high-end – apartments are planned or under construction in Boston alone, from a new tower at the Prudential Center to the long-delayed Kensington tower near Downtown Crossing. And Cambridge, Somerville and the suburbs are full of pricey new rental developments coming on line, as well.

The market for these apartments, though, is limited, targeted at the upwardly mobile and mostly child free.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The last thing I am saying is that luxury apartment construction – or for that matter, luxury condo construction – is bad. Rather, it does serve an important niche in the marketplace.

But let’s not get our hopes up that the big numbers we are seeing in terms of new apartment construction is going to make a dent in the perpetually high cost of housing here in the Bay State.

To do that, we will need to see a similar, if not greater, surge in new apartments, condos and homes in price ranges that are affordable to middle income families.

And right now, that’s just not happening.