What Fewer Vacant Homes Say About the Housing Market
Zombies are great for TV, great for movies and books, seemingly even great for the national psyche. But there’s one place where they are not so great: the housing market. Zombie homes—aka ghost houses, shuttered homes, or “Why the hell is that place still empty”? homes—are sometimes clear signposts of neighborhoods or entire regions in serious economic trouble. Other times they’re just vacation or investment homes that seem to stay empty forever. And ever.
But here’s the positive news: There are now fewer vacant homes across the United States, as home-hungry buyers rush to fill them.
“[It’s] a definite sign that we’re in a housing recovery,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president of the real estate data firm RealtyTrac.
The number of zombie properties across the country fell to just 1.6%, representing 1.36 million homes, as of Jan. 31, according to a RealtyTrac report. That’s down slightly from 1.8%, or 1.5 million properties, as of Sept. 30.
Empty homes include foreclosures. But the majority are vacation and investment properties whose owner lives elsewhere.
And some markets are still filled with empty places. The nation’s market with most vacancies, at 7.5%, is the former automotive hub Flint, MI, where a state of emergency was recently declared after lead was found in the city’s water supply. The nearby Detroit metro area ranked second, with a 5.3% vacancy rate; followed by Youngstown, OH, at 4.4%; Beaumont, TX, at 3.8%; and Atlantic City, NJ, at 3.7%. Typically, these markets include smaller satellite towns within commuting distance.
One of the factors decreasing the number of zombie homes nationwide: pure. all-American financial opportunity. Aspiring homeowners can often get excellent deals on ghost properties, says Dekonti Mends-Cole, director of policy at the Center for Community Progress, a Washington, DC-based group that works to prevent and fill empty homes.
Everyone knows that foreclosures are sold below market value. But Mends-Cole notes that unoccupied homes are also prime targets for deal-making—in the current go-go housing market, those absentee owners can often be talked down on price.
But not all ghosts are created equally, says Albert Saiz, director of the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In fact, while their numbers may be shrinking, empty vacation bungalows aren’t always such a bad thing for neighborhoods.
The owners typically pay taxes for services they may use rarely, if at all, such as sanitation or the local school system.
As a bonus, “People who have the income power to buy a second home do tend to keep them well-maintained,” says Saiz.
The post What Fewer Vacant Homes Say About the Housing Market appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.
Related Articles
