After recovering nicely in the years following a financial crisis fueled by bad mortgages, home-building stocks have had a bit of a relapse despite continued low mortgage rates. In the past three months, shares of the SPDR S&P Homebuilders exchange-traded fund have fallen 8%.

Earlier this month, noted investor Jeffrey Gundlach told an audience at the Sohn Investment Conference that single-family housing was "overbelieved and overrated." After mentioning that young adults aren't clamoring to buy homes like previous generations (the reasons are cultural as well as financial), he said that he was shorting the aforementioned home-builder ETF.

And on Wednesday, the Washington Post's Wonkblog discussed a new report by Freddie Mac, which concludes that many of the nation's regional housing markets are stalling.

In a fresh article on the StreetAuthority site, writer Dorian Davis refers to a "shadow over the U.S. housing recovery -- and even the Federal Reserve may not be able to do much about it."

Davis writes: "So what happens when you have a booming economy full of young would-be homeowners who can't afford to buy? They rent."

The article goes on to state the case for shares of Camden Property Trust, an apartment real-estate investment trust with more than 180 communities in the United States.

Camden has hiked its dividend payout almost 50% since 2010, to an annual payout of $2.64 a share and a dividend yield of 3.8%.

"Based on the company's recent performance, there's a strong case for that rising dividend payout to continue," Davis writes. "Camden's stock is up more than 20% this year, and the REIT is coming off of an upbeat quarterly earnings report that paints a positive outlook for years to come."

The article concludes that Camden "offers a great way to gain exposure to the nation's fastest-growing apartment markets while collecting a respectable yield. While the double-digit upside expected by analysts is a reachable goal, CPT will really shine if it can keep boosting its dividend -- which looks likely, based on the company's growing revenue and long-term growth prospects."

I'll close with a look by Fortune writer Christopher Matthews on the latest revised numbers on the U.S. economy during the first quarter.

The Commerce Department revised its estimate for real gross domestic product growth in the first quarter of 2014, saying that it fell by a full percentage point. That's worse than the government's previous estimate that real GDP gained by 0.1% last quarter.

"Economists had blamed much of the decline in GDP on the effects of unusually severe winter weather in much of the country, which can cause consumers and businesses to delay purchases they otherwise would have made," Matthews writes.

But looking beneath the headline percentage drop, Matthews points out that consumers actually performed better than other areas of the GDP. Consumer spending actually increased by 3.1%. "What really dragged down growth was shrinking business inventory and a lack of investment on the part of private firms -- with both categories shrinking by roughly 1.6%. Exports also fell by 6% after increasing by 9.5% in the fourth quarter of last year," Matthews writes.

If consumers, whose actions make up the bulk of economic output, are coming back a bit, perhaps it's only a matter of time for businesses to start spending money again on their actual businesses. At least, they could stop making liars out of Wall Street strategists who have been calling for a modest recovery in corporate "capex" for many months now.