WorldPropertyChannel reports Freddie Mac’s vice president and chief economist, Frank Nothaft, says due to rental demand by people postponing homeownership, rental activity has produced some good numbers in the housing market. The GSE’s U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for June 2012 says for the year ending March 2012, the number of rental housing households increased four percent, some 1.5 million, with nominal rents rising 2-4 percent during that same period. However, average rent on an inflation-adjusted basis was below where it had been 1997-2007; and the vacancy rate has fallen only two percent in the last two years. Meanwhile, as MHProNews has learned from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries index, multifamily property values gained 25 percent in the last two years, but the numbers remain 14% below their peak before the Great Recession.
