Typically when rents go up, more renters turn to home buying.

When home prices go up, more turn to renting, but today’s housing market is anything but typical.

Rents were up 3 percent nationally in January, year-over-year, according to a soon-to-be released new rental index from Zillow.com. Home prices, however, were down 4.6 percent annually.

When you look locally, the numbers are more dramatic.

In some markets, rents rose almost as much as home values fell. Take Chicago, for example, where rents were up just over 9 percent annually while home values were down just over 10 percent. The same is true for Minneapolis, where the divide is nearly the same. In San Francisco and Detroit, rents are up around 5 percent while home prices are down the same. It begs the question, as the rent vs. own divide grows, will the rental bubble suddenly burst?

Right now investors are rushing to get in on cheap foreclosures, hoping to turn them around for quick rental income. The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the FHFA, is in the midst of a pilot program to sell 2500 foreclosed properties to investors as rentals. The bulk of these properties are already rented, which means buyers get a turn-key investment with instant returns.

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