apartment REIT's

The thought came to me: How do you profit from the housing slowdown without shorting the home-builders? Well, when people stop buying houses, more people stay in apartments. It was a good idea -- a year ago! I looked at half a dozen residential apartment REIT's. The conclusion that I drew was that most of them took off about a year ago, just when housing started to slow last fall, and shortly after the home builders hit their peaks.