Well, maybe, according to this:

But with home prices falling and families losing their homes to foreclosure, some people who under other circumstances would be looking to buy their first home now see greater security in renting.

One such person is Lisa Chesnut, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, and works as an information systems coordinator. With a good job and two young sons, 29-year-old Chesnut and her husband, Bryan, look like classic first-time buyers.

They had considered it, until the market started to slide a year ago.

“At first we thought, prices are falling, that’s good,” she said in a phone interview.

“Then we started reading about the foreclosures and the ARM rates and people losing their homes,” she said. “We thought, what if something happened where we could lose our house?”

Her big fear is falling behind on a mortgage. Having read about people who face higher payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM), she realizes that being approved for a loan does not guarantee it will be affordable.

As a home owner three times over, I have to say that articles like that don’t exactly strike fear in my heart. Pretty much all of the evidence is anecdotal at best, based on conversations someone had with someone else, etc. And even the “hard” data isn’t that convincing, as far as rental turnover being basically flat and some mysterious 700,000-800,000 people who are neither renting nor buying.

The conclusion is a bit ironic, though, as far as recommending that people only consider buying if they plan on living in the home for at least five years, with dreams of big-time appreciation in just a year or two forever gone. To which I can only respond, “Good riddance”, as the expectation that one might see a substantial return in just a year or two from a home purchase is one of the key reasons we’re in the current mess we’re in right now.