While the economy emerged from its 18-month slump in June 2009, housing continues to struggle even as home-builder confidence and existing sales picked up in the last quarter of 2011.

Single-family starts fell last year while multifamily housing construction surged as more Americans became renters. That should continue to boost apartment real estate investment trusts, said Palacios. Equity Residential is among them, up more than 240 percent from its March 2009 low. AvalonBay Communities Inc. is up 230 percent.

New home sales and starts of single-family homes in 2011 were the lowest since 1963. Existing home sales for all of 2011 were up only 3.6 percent from their 2008 recession-trough, which was the lowest for a full year since 1995. Sales of distressed homes, including foreclosures, accounted for about a third of existing home sales last year, according to the realtors group.

Not A Priority

Prices are down about 33 percent from their 2006 peak, according to S&P-Case Shiller data, and most experts expect further declines. Patrick Newport, who covers housing for IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, sees prices falling another 5 to 10 percent nationwide.

People age 25 to 34 accounted for 52 percent of first-time buyers last year, near the average since 2005, according to the Realtors group. Still, almost 6 million Americans in that group were living with their parents in 2011, up from 4.7 million when the recession began in 2007, according to Census data.

Buying a home is not high on Marie Casteel's priority list. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati in May with a law degree and $120,000 in debt.

She's deferred most student debt payments while she begins a job as a family attorney that she says should pay about $45,000 a year. Once her full re-payment schedule kicks in early next year, she expects to be paying about $1,500 a month.

Financially Reasonable

"I wouldn't be looking at jumping into another $100,000 of debt to own a home," said the 31-year-old single mother. "I don't think jumping into home ownership would be financially reasonable."