The number of vacant homes across the nation is at its highest since at least 1995.
On Monday, the Census Bureau released its quarterly report titled “Census Bureau Reports on Residential Vacancies and Homeownership.”
It’s main findings included:
- For rental units, the first quarter vacancy rate was 10.1% (this number is not that startling — there is always a relatively high rental vacancy rate).
- For homeowner homes, the vacancy rate in the first quarter of 2008 was 2.9%. Since 1995, the vacancy rate only crept over 2% for the first time in 2006, with a low during the period of 1995 to 2008 being 1.5% during 4 quarters of the last 13 years.
My take is that the vacancies initially crept past 2% in 2006 because of overbuilding and speculative buyers who were buying up every property they could hoping run into a cash windfall.
With talk of the number of foreclosures doubling before things start looking up, I imagine that the number of homeowner home vacancies will creep up to numbers we never imagined.
I keep waiting for the media and government to pump out great news about the housing market, but there really isn’t any.
I had a meeting with an agent today and we were discussing what we read versus what we are actually experiencing out on the “street.” Both of our businesses have suffered this downturn. Of course, that is expected for me because I sell foreclosed properties for the banks, but his business is also holding steady even though he does very little, if anything with foreclosed properties. He commented that he cannot reconcile what he is hearing and reading from the government and media with what is going on around him.
I agreed with him. I know plenty of real estate agents with plenty of clients who are buying and selling lots of homes. It is not a great market to be in, but the best agents are keeping plenty busy with anxious clients. Granted, there are a lot of real estate agents, lenders and title companies who have closed up shop, but the market professionals was already over-saturated because of the housing bubble we were in. I consider those people to be the ones who were chasing the cash. Real estate was a great business to be in until recently.
Not every state is sitting in foreclosure state. There are some good things going on in real estate. The media just refuses to report them, thereby, making things worse.
Sometimes to me it seems to be higher. I rarely show an occupied home.
Here in SW Florida we seem to be passing the crest of the vacancy wave. Our local paper headlined this morning that the "Glut of Homes Shrinking". Actually it is sort of a numbers game, but as sales have picked up, inventory in terms of months, has diminished pretty sharply. Total number of homes available has diminished a little.
JimG
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
Maryland isn't really considered a "foreclosure state," either...at least right now.
The numbers are starting to pickup though.
I was assigned 4 new listings in the last 5 days and I have not seen that type of assignment activity for about two months.