Speculators sitting on inventory?
Saturday, April 28th, 2007More news from the Commerce Department (pdf) yesterday - the number of homes sitting empty has increased fairly dramatically. Homeowner vacancy increased to 2.8% from 2.1% and rental vacancy increased to 10.1% from 9.5% versus the first quarter of 2006. That means that there are now almost 4 million units for rent, 2.2 million houses for sale and 7.3 millions units vacant for no apparent reason (dead cities?). When looking at homeowner data by area, cities increased 60% to 4% occupancy, Metropolitan Statistical Areas increased 45% to 2.9%, and suburbs increased 33% to 2.4%. Regionally, the South has both the highest rental and homeowner vacancy. The data below:
