The booming multifamily mortgage market has risen to new heights, passing the lofty $1 trillion mark. But while that may mean boom times for apartment lenders, increasing demand may not translate into good times for renters.

Apartment mortgages outstanding hit $1.02 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2015, according to the Mortgage Bankers of America.

That was up a hefty 2 percent in one quarter, rising $19.3 billion from the end of the second quarter. And it was the highest level since MBA started tracking commercial and multifamily mortgages in 2007.

It's no secret what's fueling the increasing demand for apartments: the decreasing demand for homeownership. "With the U.S. homeownership rate at its lowest since 1967, the U.S. renter population is the largest it has ever been, and now stands at 43 million households," according to a report by Apartment List, a rental search engine.

The laws of supply and demand mandate increased prices for in-demand products and services, and the rental markets are no different. But affording higher rents has rarely been more difficult than it is today: As of 2014, more than half of the nation's renters -- 52 percent -- were considered "cost-burdened."

The housing market defines a "cost-burdened renter" as someone who spends at least 30 percent of his or her income on housing. At 30 percent to 50 percent, renters are deemed "moderately burdened." If they pay more than 50 percent, they are counted as "severely burdened."

According to Apartment List, the rise in demand for apartments, plus the very modest growth in renters' incomes in recent years, is causing the pinch.

"The share of cost-burdened renters has risen in many cities and states across the nation," the website says. "According to the census data used in our analysis, the share of cost-burdened renters is 40 percent or higher in all but two states as of 2013."

The worst rental markets correspond to the nation's most expensive housing markets: both coasts, plus Hawaii. "Florida, Hawaii and California have the worst scores: Each of them have cost-burden rates of 57 percent or higher. Thirty percent of renters there spend more than half their income on rent," Apartment List reported.

Anyone looking for an inexpensive rental market should try North and South Dakota. According to the report, the Dakotas are the only two states in the country where less than 40 percent of renters were cost-burdened.

If relocating to either of those two states doesn't work for you, the question then becomes: How do renters find the scarce bargains out there? One method is to look for landlord subsidy programs, in which the subsidies are passed on to the renters to make their rents more affordable.

The state of New Jersey has one such program. The subsidies in the Garden State came in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which caused massive damage in many areas. The state earmarked $18 million of Sandy disaster money to a Landlord Incentive Program. According to the program's website, it is "designed to make it financially possible for rental property owners of all sizes to provide safe, suitable and affordable housing for low- and moderate-income residents who have found it difficult to locate housing after Superstorm Sandy."

The program provides landlords with a steady revenue stream in order to "encourage them to rent their vacant apartments to families of limited financial means with the guarantee of receiving fair market value rent. Rental property owners will receive roughly the difference between 30 percent of the tenant's monthly income and federal fair market rents each month."

It's sort of a local version of the federal Section 8 program -- Washington's main method for helping low-income families find decent housing. Section 8 is another way people can search for more affordable rentals.

Under Section 8, participants are free to choose any type of housing, including single-family homes, townhouses and apartments. Funds for the program come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but are administered locally by public housing agencies.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this column.

The great minds in the mortgage business continue to make it simpler for everyday folks to deal with financing.

Fannie Mae, for example, has made it easier to finance a new home while converting your existing residence into an income-generating rental. And if you recently -- very recently -- paid cash for a property, Fannie also will allow you to finance the deal after the fact, as long as you do so within 180 days.

Meanwhile, B2R Finance, a company that provides buy-to-rent funding for investors, is now in the market with single-property loans for mom-and-pop landlords. And in the super-high-priced San Francisco Bay Area, the San Francisco Federal Credit Union is offering nothing-down loans of up to $2 million.

Fannie Mae doesn't make loans; rather, it buys loans from primary lenders. And when the secondary market giant signals it's changed its requirements, the main street marketplace tends to follow.

In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Fannie Mae changed its rules to make it much more difficult to use phantom income from "renting" the current house to qualify for a loan on a new place. This was because people would tell their lenders they intended to rent out their old house when, in fact, they had no such desire. Then they'd default on the old loan as soon as the new loan was secured -- a practice called a "strategic default."

"So what?" reasoned these defaulters. "Since I now have a new loan on a more affordable house, I'll let the lender foreclose on the old one."

Now, reflecting current market conditions, Fannie has quietly gone back to its precrisis rules, according to Jude Landis, vice president of single-family credit policy at the mortgage giant.

In other words, lenders can once again rely on such standard requirements as income and cash-reserve documentation. They no longer have to confirm the borrower's equity position in the proposed rental with expensive broker price opinions or appraisals, paid for by the borrower.

Also, the rule that borrowers with less than 30 percent equity must have six months' worth of mortgage payments in cash reserves has been waived. So has the requirement that a tenant's security deposit be confirmed.

Fannie Mae's delayed financing program for cash buyers isn't new. But most people don't know about it, says Chris Carter, a loan officer with the Paramount Residential Mortgage Group in Naples, Florida.

There are plenty of reasons to pay cash for a house. Perhaps most importantly, it makes for a much "cleaner" deal with no contingency for financing. Sellers tend to see cash offers as golden, and are often willing to give a little on the price to reel them in.

While an excellent bargaining ploy for buyers, an all-cash sale tends to tie up a lot of their money -- money that could be put into a higher-yielding, more liquid investment.

Typically, cash buyers have to wait a minimum of six months to refinance the property, and only then can they release some of their money. With delayed finance loans, though, you can get more of your money back just a few days after you close.

To qualify, the original purchase must have been an arm's-length transaction: Deals between related parties are not eligible. Also, the settlement sheet must show that no financing whatsoever was used. Funds for the purchase must be fully documented and sourced.

If you meet these and other requirements, delayed financing can be used for primary residences, second homes or investment properties for up to 70 percent of the value. Better yet, the loan amount can include closing costs and prepaid fees, as long as the maximum loan-to-value ratio is maintained.

With delayed financing, investors can out-bargain regular buyers, or fund their transactions using the new Foundation Loan from B2R.

B2R and other companies that offer buy-to-rent financing typically deal with people who have rental portfolios of 10 or more properties. But the Foundation Loan is for small-time, beginning investors who buy just one property -- or, at least, one property at a time.

The product, which is available online through B2R's Dwell Finance Investor division (dwellfinance.com), can be used to acquire or refinance properties. Loan amounts can be as little as $60,000 or as much as $750,000, and rates are fixed for up to 30 years.

B2R CEO Jason Hogg says investors are "craving" single-property loans like this: He says the company took in 119 applications over Halloween weekend, before it even began actively marketing the product.

Finally, there's the POPPYLOAN from San Francisco Federal, a 60-year-old credit union with some 34,000 members serving the Bay Area. With POPPY, which stands for the "Proud Ownership Purchase Program for You," members can borrow up to $2 million without taking a dime out of their own pockets. There isn't even a requirement for mortgage insurance.

The loan is a 5-5 adjustable-rate mortgage, meaning that it will adjust every five years, and only by a maximum of 2 percentage points each time (up to six points over the life of the loan).

The mortgage is a response to the abnormally high rents in the Bay Area. Many there are paying more to their landlords then they would on mortgage payments, but because they can't put together a down payment, they've been stuck in a rental black hole. POPPY may offer a way out.

In the 2006 romantic comedy "Failure to Launch," Matthew McConaughey played a 35-year-old man still living at home with his parents and showing little interest in moving out on his own. If that film were made today, it could just as easily be about a woman.

According to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center, a larger share of young women are living at home with Mom, Dad or other relatives than at any point since the 1940s. That is, 36.4 percent of women ages 18 to 34 resided with family in 2014. (A larger share of young men in that age group -- 42.8 percent -- are living at home. But that percentage does not surpass the highest rates on record like the women's share does.)

"You'd have to go back 74 years to observe similar living arrangements among American young women," says Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. "Young men, too, are increasingly living in the same situation, but unlike women, their share hasn't climbed to its level from 1940, the highest year on record." (Comparable data on living arrangements are not available prior to 1940.)

Fry explains the increase by pointing out that today's young women are more likely to be college students, and less likely to be married, than those of earlier generations. Students and singletons are both more likely to live with family.

Some numbers to back up those statements: Today, five times more young women are likely to be enrolled in college than in 1940. And in 2014, 45 percent of female college students lived with family. At the same time, while marriage tends to mean living independently of Mom and Dad, more young women today are delaying marriage than their predecessors. In 2013, only 30 percent of young women were likely to be married, compared with 1940's 62 percent.

But mortgage industry expert Becky Walzak suspects there's more at work here than demographics. She says the home loan approval process still looks down on women. Not overtly, she says, but underwriters still perceive women as "lesser" than men.

Based on her deep-dive read of data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Walzak says women "are less able to meet (underwriting) standards then men." And the process is even harder on black women, who are often the primary applicants on loans to African-Americans.

For one thing, notes Walzak -- a mortgage finance veteran who now operates her own consulting firm -- women are seen as less reliable because they often interrupt their careers for any variety of reasons, but primarily to have children and then care for them.

For another, women aren't usually able to save as much money for a down payment as men. "Their wealth is largely less," she explains of women who've taken time off. "Not just dollars (earned), but when they go from working to not working, any retirement savings that would have been set aside that is based on pay is forfeited. So, depending on how much time they take off, they can be several years behind men."

The mortgage expert also points out that women's spending patterns are often different from men's. Generally speaking, she says, women tend to carry more debt.

Another factor, noted in Fortune magazine, is student debt. Women tend to have a greater albatross around their necks in the form of student debt than men: $20,000 vs $14,000, according to the magazine.

"It's because of these factors that single women are not being approved as often as single men for a loan," says Walzak. "It's not discrimination in any shape or form. But the business needs to figure out how to understand women, how to evaluate them more fairly and then try to do something about it."

Many women's organizations focus on pay equality. And while that's an important issue, Walzak believes that the mortgage sector "has to make it easier for single women heads-of-households to buy homes. Why can't we as an industry figure out some kind of credit policy or new product that meet their needs?"

Meanwhile, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the share of first-time buyers -- men, women and married couples -- among all mortgages declined in 2015 for the third consecutive year. It's now at its lowest point in nearly three decades.

The long-term average shows that first-timers account for almost 40 percent of all primary home purchases. But the rookie share dipped last year to 32 percent -- down from 33 percent in 2014, and the lowest since 1987, when rookies accounted for just 30 percent of sales.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun calls first-time buyers "the missing link" that's slowing the housing recovery.

"There are several reasons why there should be more first-time buyers, including persistently low mortgage rates, healthy job prospects for the college-educated, and the fact that renting is becoming more unaffordable in many areas," he said. "Unfortunately, there are just as many high hurdles slowing first-time buyers down. Increasing rents and home prices are impeding their ability to save for a down payment, there's scarce inventory for new and existing homes in their price ranges, and it's still too difficult for some to get a mortgage."