Persistent underbuilding since the 2008 financial crisis has created a U.S. housing shortfall that government agencies, industry advocates and political leaders are desperate to rectify, hoping that more supply can gradually lower the cost of housing.
Estimates of the size of the U.S. housing shortage typically fall between 4 million to 7 million homes, with the time it may take to address that shortfall projected to be up to 10 years.
Some homes the market needs may be ghosting the market altogether, however.
The real estate market analytics firm Attom estimates that the U.S. has roughly 104.3 million residential homes. And yet, 1.32% of those properties — or roughly 1.38 million homes — sat vacant as of the fourth quarter, haunting the nation’s housing supply.
That number is down slightly from 1.33% in the previous quarter, according to Attom, which tracked the figures in its quarterly Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report.
“These continuously low vacancy rates, that the nation has held steady at around 1.4% for nearly four years, show that record-high prices haven’t dampened the demand for homes,” said Rob Barber, CEO of Attom, in a press release.
Approximately 7,448 of vacant homes in the U.S. are “zombie” properties, meaning the owners have abandoned the properties prior to the conclusion of foreclosure proceedings. That figure has shrunk from 3.38% as of the third quarter to 3.25% as of the fourth quarter.
“It’s a good sign for local housing markets that even as we’ve seen foreclosure filings increase, the rate of homes in foreclosure that are abandoned is going down,” Barber added.
States with the highest share of zombie properties among total home vacancies were Kansas (12.3%), Iowa (8.6%), Oregon (7.1%), Indiana (6.4%) and Ohio (6.3%).
Overall, the analysis shows that 228,943 residential properties nationwide were in the process of foreclosure during the fourth quarter.
States with the highest overall home vacancy rates in the fourth quarter include Oklahoma (2.4%), Kansas (2.3%), Alabama (2.2%), Missouri (2.1%) and West Virginia (2.1%), while states with the lowest vacancy rates are New Hampshire (0.3%), Vermont (0.4%), New Jersey (0.5%), Idaho (0.5%) and Connecticut (0.5%).
Meanwhile, homes owned by institutional investors showed slightly higher vacancy rates as of the fourth quarter compared with owner-occupied properties.
Of the 880,347 investor-owned properties across the U.S., 3.5% were vacant compared to the overall rate of 3.3%. States with the highest vacancy rates for investor-owned homes include Indiana (7.1%), Illinois (6.1%), Alabama (5.9%), Oklahoma (5.9%) and Kansas (5.8%).
