Home ownership vacancy is usually a sign of high levels of disparity or high levels of vacation homes.

With the looming housing inventory issue, vacant homes could allow some form of relief if the conditions allow for that property to be made available to a new home owner.

• Many of these homes likely require some renovations before they can move-in ready.

Just because there may be several vacancies, doesn’t mean the location will allow for a renovation.

• The final renovated value of the home needs to support the entrance cost, repair costs, holding costs, selling costs and profit, for any project to be feasible.
  • See articles; How to Calculate Your ARV and Repairs in Real Estate Investing, Know Your Numbers in Real Estate and Stop Relying on the 70% Rule and Learn How Knowing Your Buy Box in Real Estate Helps You Make Better Deals, to learn more about preparing for any real estate renovation project.

Not all locations, support this formula.

Areas can become deprived in situations where the the numbers simply don’t make sense.

If the numbers do make sense, reviving vacant homes can be helpful to our housing inventory.

Let’s review the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest vacancies, amongst America’s top 75 metropolitan areas.

Top 10 Metropolitan Areas for Home Ownership Vacancy

All data is for the first quarter of 2023 courtesy of Census.gov

1. Tucson, Arizona – 3.8%
2. Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida – 2.2%
3. Fresno, California – 1.8%
4. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, Georgia – 1.7%
5. Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Indiana – 1,7%
6. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas – 1.6%
7. New Orleans-Metairie, Louisiana – 1.5%
8. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida – 1.5%
9. Toledo, Ohio – 1.5%
10. Columbia, South Carolina – 1.3%

Conclusion

To put this in perspective, if an area has 1,000,000 homes, 1% is 10,000 homes.

If an area has 500,000 homes, 1% is 5,000 homes.

Although these percentages are low, thousands of homes entering the market in any metropolitan area is helpful to that local community.

Thanks for joining us today faithful readers-future leaders!  

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Please comment what you would like to see done with vacant homes in your area.