Jobs,jobs, jobs. Commercial real estate is all about jobs. And particularly the multifamily sector—after all, you can’t pay your rent if you don’t have a job.

But in this cycle, the housing market has also had an impact on multifamily fundamentals, as a favorable mortgage market led more households our of the rental pool in favor of buying. That is, until the credit crash two years ago.

In recent months, apartment fundamentals have been steadily improving, even as property segments continue to suffer. The national vacancy rate for rental multifamily buildings with five or more units, according to the US Census Bureau, has declined from 11.1% at the end of the third quarter 2009, to 10.7% at year-end 2009, to 10.6% in both the first and second quarters of this year. And the National Multi Housing Council’s Market Tightness Index, which measures vacancies and rental rate increases for apartment assets nationally, has been on a steady rise. The figure has gone from 20 in July 2009, to 31 October 2009 to 38 in January 2010, and then skyrocketed to 81 in April 2010 and 83 this past July.