US housing industry trends for 2012

Builder magazine is the premier magazine in the US for the residential single family homebuilding industry. Every year, it assembles a list of trends it believes will represent the direction of their industry the following year. Though the magazine is concerned with only the US industry, there are some interesting trends worth noting: modular building, an increase in rentals and the general move of homebuilding companies to use this time to reload, retool, and rethink how they build homes. If Canada sees a similar slowdown, as some experts expect, could these trends represent the future of the Canadian industry?