At a time when household units are forming faster than houses are built and many Americans cannot find a home at all, it may come as a ...
At a time when household units are forming faster than houses are built and many Americans cannot find a home at all, it may come as a surprise that nearly one in 10 American households – more than 16 million in total – were “vacant” when the 2020 census was recorded. In some states , the vacancy rate exceeded 20%. What can we think of these figures? A recent post from LendingTree attempts to analyze the data by comparing vacancy rates across the 50 states, the basis for this week’s chart.
The Census Bureau considers any home that is unoccupied on April 1 — Census Day — to be “vacant,” so the definition includes unoccupied second homes and rentals, abandoned or foreclosed homes, seasonal migrant neighborhoods, and vacation homes. investment properties, in addition to empty homes that are for sale. The quoted 2020 vacancy rates (which take into account one-year experimental estimates through the rest of 2020) are the most accurate and robust data available, but should not be taken as clear, up-to-date indicators of the situation. Marlet. They can, however, provide insight.
“You can go to a place with a really high vacancy rate and the house prices are really cheap, and that might suggest that people just don’t want to live there, or that there’s some type of problem. economy that’s keeping people from buying,” said Jacob Channel, author of the LendingTree post. “If you have an area that has a very high vacancy rate where house prices are very high, that might suggest that many people use the area for second homes.”
the national vacancy rate has not changed much over the past 20 years, from 9% in 2000 to 11.4% in 2010 and 9.7% in 2020. So the rates alone are complicated when considering the housing searches or the broader problem of housing shortages. “As New Yorkers, we look and say, ‘There are tens of thousands of homeless people, there are potentially millions struggling to pay rent, but we still have these vacant units.’ “said Mr. Channel.
Obviously, solving the dilemma of homelessness in the country is not as simple as placing people in need of housing in vacant homes, but understanding vacancy rates is important when considering considers housing issues in a broader sense, as it does for the buyer of a single-family home.
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