MBA chief economist and senior vice president Dough Duncan headed up the conference call and noted that despite the anticipated growth, low inflation will keep increases in interest rates to a minimum. "With inflation under control in the presence of a growing economy, the 30-year mortgage rate will rise to slightly more than 7% by the end of the three-year forecast period," Duncan noted. "From a historical perspective, these are very modest interest rate increases for the level of economic growth we are expecting, and should cause few adjustment problems for the housing industry."

As for the anticipation of few adjustment issues in the multifamily housing sector, projected housing starts detailed in MBA's long-term mortgage finance forecast report tell the tale. The average quarterly housing starts number in 2003 was 349,000, and that figure is expected to remain the same for this year. And while that average will likely see a slight decrease to 330,000 in 2005, the figure will get a boost again in 2006 and hit the 337,000 mark. "There are still properties coming onto the market and that is in anticipation of the demographic push that is going to be boosted by immigrants and other lower-income households who, as employment picks up, will see strengthening in their resources," Duncan said in response to a GlobeSt.com inquiry during the conference call. "And you'll see some households disaggregate into multiple rental units before folks move into their own purchase market. So the future is quite strong."

Duncan pointed to other indicators of the strong future for multifamily, even in the face of drastically high apartment vacancy rates in markets across the country, and record high home sales due to low interest rates. "So you might say that would put multifamily lenders into a difficult situation, but multifamily lenders have been able to take advantage of the same refinancing opportunities that single-family owners have, and lower the debt-service cost on the financing of their apartment units," he explains. "So that even though total rent payments have fallen, so have debt-service payments, and that has kept them solvent and delinquency levels at very low levels."