If there can be an upside to the housing crash, the apartment sector is where you'll find it.

Vacancies are down and rents are up, according to the latest data from Reis, Inc. Not only is the sector seeing improvements, it's seeing record improvements.

"It's the strongest performance in the third quarter we've ever recorded in ten years," says Victor Canalog of Reis.

National vacancies fell from 7.8% to 7.2% in the third quarter of this year, one of the sharpest quarterly declines in vacancy on record. Occupied stock increased by over 84,000 units, the highest quarterly number for net units absorbed by the overall market on record. That in turn pushed asking and effective rents up 0.5 AND 0.6% respectively. With rents pushing even higher in larger cities, where home ownership has become more difficult thanks to the credit crunch.

"The market segment that is primarily a rental segment today is simply not interested in buying a single family home," says David Nethercutt, CEO of Equity Residential, an apartment REIT (real estate investment trust).

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