With foreclosures rising and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requiring a 20 percent down payment for residential loans, the real estate industry's rental market has begun to pick up in the United States.

Foreclosures make up approximately 35 percent of home sales, a trend which Jed Smith, managing director of quantitative research for the National Association of Realtors, believes will continue for another 2-3 years, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Foreclosed homeowners are often forced into the rental market, while more young adults are moving back home to their parents' houses and the elderly are moving in with their children.

"The stage is being set for very strong rent increases," Stan Humphries, chief economist for real estate website Zillow, explained to members of the National Association of Real Estate Editors, at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. "With home prices continuing to fall and foreclosures not yet hitting their peak, more people are moving into apartments."

However, Mark Dotzour, an economist with Texas A & M Real Estate Center, predicts some good news.

He explained during the conference that multi-family housing starts are up, and as foreclosures increase and are resold to people who want to live there - rather than to investors - prices will stabilize and single-family demand will increase.