SAN FRANCISCO -- Apartment rents in the western United States are barely climbing -- good news for renters but actually a sign of a weakening economy, according to a new report released Thursday.

The good news for renters is that while homeowners have watched the value of their houses drop, and subprime loan holders have seen their mortgages double, even triple, many apartment renters are paying just a few dollars more than they did a year ago, according to the report by RealFacts Inc.

Of the 19 major Western metropolitan markets covered in the analysis, 14 experienced quarterly rent growth, but none more than 1.7 percent, and four actually declined.

That's consistent with national trends, which found average rents across the nation increased by only 0.6 percent since March 2008 and only 2.5 percent in the last year, the report said. Relative to other items in the household budget, apartment rent is lagging behind inflation, which was 5.2 percent in June 2008.

But what the slow rate of increase for rents actually means is that times are bad, said Caroline Latham, CEO of RealFacts.

"Basically the rental market is reflecting the economy," Latham said. "For many people, there's a misperception that as home foreclosures go up, there is increased demand for rentals and a rise in apartment costs. We don't see that correlation. It's all the housing market and when there's a weak economy, all of it suffers."

RealFacts' analysis on some areas with high foreclosure rates found that rents were barely affected from the first quarter of this year to the second.

In Stockton, Calif., for example, which has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, rents have risen 0.7 percent (and the occupancy rate rose by 1.0 percent). In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, rents have actually declined slightly, by 0.3 percent (with the occupancy rate also declining by 0.3 percent), and rents in Las Vegas have remained unchanged (though occupancy has dropped by 0.9 percent).

Often, people who lose their houses to foreclosures do not end up renting an apartment; rather, they move in with relatives, Latham said. The trend is especially true among Asian and Hispanic ethnic groups, she added.

"Their tradition is that when times are hard, they all live in one house. As they make money and save money, they buy a house and eventually everyone has their own house," Latham said.

For the areas RealFacts surveyed nationwide, the average year-over-year increase is only 2.5 percent.

There are some markets where rents have increased by more than 5 percent this year, and as much as 10 percent last year over the year before. But those areas had experienced drops in rental prices after the 1999 dot-com bust and have been "playing catch-up" over the last few years, Latham said.

San Jose, for example, saw rents go up 7.3 percent over the last year, from $1,574 to $1,689, making it the most expensive market in the nation. But rents there had fallen by double digits in the years 2001 and 2002 and hit bottom in 2004, Latham said.

San Francisco, where rents rose 7.7 percent over the last year, has had a similar pattern.

Again the West's least expensive apartment rental market was Tucson, Ariz., where the monthly cost declined 1 percent to $661.

Southern California, where rents boomed in the early part of this decade, is now seeing the smallest increase in rents in the West.

Riverside and San Bernardino counties, for many years a rent growth leader, actually posted a quarterly decline of 0.3 percent, and the annual growth rate was only 0.7 percent. San Diego and the Los Angeles-Orange County area saw 3.5 percent annual growth, and Ventura County, an area of hot rent growth a year ago, gained just 0.5 percent in the past year.

Latham attributes the trend, again, to a weakening economy.

"It hit Southern California first because they had gone up so much in the last five years," she said. "Northern California is still going up but it's about to hit that barrier."