Some of the inventory is here:
<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=am4VMDGoSAPY&">Home Vacancies Rise in U.S. to Record Amid Recession</a>
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- A record 19.1 million homes stood unoccupied in the first quarter and the U.S. homeownership rate fell as the recession sapped demand for real estate.
The number of vacant homes, including foreclosures, properties for sale and vacation properties, jumped from 18.6 million a year earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. Households that own their own residence declined for the third straight quarter to 67.3 percent.
The U.S. financial crisis and falling home prices have shattered the confidence of homebuyers. The percentage of people who said they plan to buy a home in the next six months dropped to a 26-year low in March, according to the Conference Board in New York. Job losses will continue to erode real estate demand, according to an April 23 report by Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American CoreLogic Inc. in Santa Ana, California.
?We expect home prices to continue to decline into 2010 as economic conditions and excess housing inventories dampen prices,? Fleming said in the report. ?Decreases are now being driven by rising unemployment and a high volume of distressed home sales.?
The percentage of all U.S. homes empty and for sale, known as the vacancy rate, fell to 2.7 percent in the first quarter. It hit an all-time high of 2.9 percent in the first and fourth quarters of 2008, the Census Bureau said.
<strong>Giving Up</strong>
The vacancy rate fell as the number of homes on the market declined because they were sold or because their owners gave up trying to market them. The inventory of homes on the market averaged 3.7 million in each of 2009?s first three months, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. Last year, the monthly average was 4.2 million.
There were 130.4 million homes in the U.S. in the first quarter, the Census Bureau said. In addition to the 2.1 million empty properties for sale, the report counted 4.2 million vacant homes for rent and 4.9 million seasonal properties that are only used for part of the year.
Foreclosures are included in a part of the Census Bureau that also includes vacation homes intended for year-round use and homes that are unoccupied because they are under renovation. There were 7.9 million such properties empty in the first quarter, up from 7.5 million a year earlier, the report said.
Foreclosures could also be counted as vacant homes for sale or rent, or as owner-occupied properties if lenders have not yet evicted previous owners, the agency said.
<strong>Job Losses</strong>
The economy has lost about 5.1 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, the biggest drop of the post- war era. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg in early April said unemployment probably will rise to 9.5 percent by the end of the year, up from March?s 25-year high of 8.5 percent.
The share of mortgages in foreclosure rose to an all-time high of 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a March 5 report. Delinquencies, or the percentage of home loans that have payments 30 days or more overdue, increased to 7.88 percent, the highest in records dating to 1972, the Washington-based trade group said.
Banks held $11.5 billion of foreclosed properties in the fourth quarter, up from $6.5 billion in the year-earlier period, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Washington.
<a href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/near-record-home-vacancies-in-us/">From Barry at the Big Picture:</a>
This is an astonishing datapoint:
?There were 18.7 million vacant homes in the U.S. during the second quarter as the steepest recession in 50 years sapped demand for real estate and banks seized properties from delinquent borrowers.
The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, was little changed from 18.6 million a year earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. Households that own their own residence stood at 67.3 percent, seasonally adjusted.
Home values dropped 33 percent since 2006, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index, and the unemployment rate in June rose to the highest in almost 26 years. Tumbling home prices and rising job losses have thwarted government efforts to reverse the housing decline at the heart of the longest U.S. recession since the 1930s.?
Note that the recent record in April of this year was 19.2 million in April 2009.
As Peter Boockvar points out, Commerce just released Q2 Home Ownership rates. Its now at 67.4%, way off the record high of 69.2% in the last quarter of 2004. For comparison?s sake, in 1965 the rate was 65.3%.
<strong>
For those people looking for a bounce back, we may still be reverting back towards the long term mean.
With little or no pent up demand for housing, it?s hard to see how vacancies or ownership point are a bottom stat . . .</strong>
[Note: I updated the headline to reflect the higher Q1 data released in April '09]
