Danielle DiMartino has this on declining home ownership. "The evidence of a deflating housing bubble is spreading to places less visible to the naked eye. The evidence has segued to the subtle in three ways; mounting mortgage interest expenses, a declining homeownership rate and a rising owner-occupied vacancy rate."

"According to Moody's chief economist John Lonski, the yearly increase in mortgage interest paid by households rose to 15.8 percent in the first quarter, a 24-year high."

"Interest rates aren't soaring. How can households' interest payments rise that much? Here's how Mr. Lonski put it: 'The steep advance by household interest costs amid relatively low fixed-rate borrowing costs is unusual and reflects an earlier atypical reliance on variable-rate mortgage debt for the purpose of affording costlier housing.'"

"In other words, the chickens are coming home to roost on the variable-rate mortgages." "And then there is the homeownership rate. After more than a decade of rising to the highest levels on record, the homeownership rate declined to 68.5 percent in the first quarter of 2006 from 69.1 percent in the same quarter last year."

"But that's not the whole story, according to Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius: 'The decline in homeownership..has occurred in the face of strong rental-to-condo conversions of apartment buildings, which have expanded the supply of owner-occupied units. Thus, declining homeownership is very likely due to a decline in demand, not a decline in supply of owner-occupied units.'"

"And finally, the owner-occupied vacancy rate is rising sharply. At 2.1 percent, the current rate is the highest on record. This is, of course, an unintentional consequence of speculators realizing there's no place to take a seat now that the music has stopped."

The Lowell Sun has a related tale from Massachusetts. "Despite a booming housing market for several years, area landlords are now finding themselves in a bind, a shrinking tenant pool has made them unable to raise rents."

"From the perspective of a landlord, 'the rental market in Lowell is terrible. I would say the biggest problem is there just seems to be no tenants out there. You can advertise, but you don't get very many calls,' said Dick Macdonald, president of the Greater Lowell Landlords Association."

"Vacancy rates in Lowell are around 20 percent, about double the rate nationwide. One Lowell landlord said a vacancy that lasts a month or so is 'within their comfort zone,' but in recent times apartments that have been vacant for four or six months at a time are not uncommon.'"

"Landlords also say that many properties, especially duplexes and three-family homes, have been converted to condominiums. Also, construction of rental properties has increased as well. 'How they plan on filling them, I don't know,' said Macdonald."