Looking forward at the state of the multifamily real estate market in the upcoming year, it appears that investors looking to build capital in the commercial sector will be presented a positive forecast that is expected to keep them in the black.

With more and more people looking to apartment homes as a solution to their housing needs and the job markets in big cities continuing to improve, the trend is going to continue to see the masses being drawn into the big metropolitan areas. But, because of the fact that the recession has cost these individual renters so much and left them with added debt, they unfortunately do not have the funds available to make a down payment on a single-family purchase. Especially in this tougher lending environment that doesn't expect to change anytime in the coming year.

As matter of fact, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has put into effect for 2014 a new debt-to-income ratio of 43% which is going to cause between 10% and 50% of these would be homebuyers out of the market completely come January 10th, 2014.

Then there’s the fact that while the demand for apartment/multifamily units are going up and the ability to purchase single-family goes down, the availability of new units is unable to fulfill the current and expected needs of the market.

While this increased mandate for new apartment construction has been directly affected by the country’s real estate crisis, we’ve seen vacancy rates get almost cut in half from around 8% in 2010 to 4.3% in the first quarter of 2013. This has caused the average rate of rents to increase at 3% a year or double the rate of inflation and you can expect this trend to continue through 2014 as well.

On the whole, 2014 calls for continued recovery in the multifamily market that should result in a boost of new construction in excess of 400,000 units a year starting in 2014 and continuing through 2015.

In addition to our positive forecast, we can also expect to see a rise in consumer confidence that is set to continue over the next three years, according to a report from the Urban Land Institute. In this report, we see evidence to support these predictions that estimate a $50 billion boost in overall real estate transactions in 2014, which is up 17% from this time in 2012, and a bump mortgage backed securities that are expected to see its numbers explode 60% from $48 billion in 2012 to around $80 billion in 2014.

What this means for rental property investors is that we can expect to see an average return on our investments at about 9% in 2014.

The only major obstacles that might affect the multifamily real estate market in 2014 could be unforeseen major financial complications at the federal level that may translate into constraints put on the readiness of mortgage credit.