Again, is it empty because it’s just sitting there, fully habitable and just accruing value, or is it empty because it’s under renovation, or in-between purchases so someone up the chain is buying and the house is sitting vacant while it’s being sold, but not for long enough for anyone else to be living there? Or currently sitting in legal limbo where a large number of people inherit a house and can’t all agree to sell it? I don’t know about the US but I know Malta has that problem where there needs to be consensus among all members of the estate before a property can be sold, so it sits empty, potentially for years.
When I worked in a rural county housing came in 3 forms: retirees who fully owned, rental tenants with absentee landlords (usually the children of deceases retirees), and then vacant homes.
Many were vacant for varieties of reasons. Some because they were vacation homes. Others because they were in some stage of the market (repair, and renovation). Others were empty nest situations and the owners lived abroad or out of state all winter/summer. (A lot of RV snowbirds) But then most prime real estate (lakefront properties) were just occupied a few weeks at a time by a rotating group of extended family and friends.
What was becoming a problem at the time (within the last decade) were the latter category becoming airBnBs and private equity investments because of their inherent value.
And those drive up the costs everywhere else, making everyone and everything clamp down because you can only take advantage of investment bubbles by leveraging debt, which is not a strategy people in need of housing csn make.
There are a surpluss of houses in the us, because private equity is hoarding it. The total number of vacant houses has gone up every year since 2009.
Clearly there isnt a population explosion making the housing supply tight and overall empty houses that becoming occupied are being replaced with the now empty house they just moved out of.
And the empty house to homeless person ratio has been trending up for nearly 2 decades.
Again, is it empty because it’s just sitting there, fully habitable and just accruing value, or is it empty because it’s under renovation, or in-between purchases so someone up the chain is buying and the house is sitting vacant while it’s being sold, but not for long enough for anyone else to be living there? Or currently sitting in legal limbo where a large number of people inherit a house and can’t all agree to sell it? I don’t know about the US but I know Malta has that problem where there needs to be consensus among all members of the estate before a property can be sold, so it sits empty, potentially for years.
When I worked in a rural county housing came in 3 forms: retirees who fully owned, rental tenants with absentee landlords (usually the children of deceases retirees), and then vacant homes.
Many were vacant for varieties of reasons. Some because they were vacation homes. Others because they were in some stage of the market (repair, and renovation). Others were empty nest situations and the owners lived abroad or out of state all winter/summer. (A lot of RV snowbirds) But then most prime real estate (lakefront properties) were just occupied a few weeks at a time by a rotating group of extended family and friends.
What was becoming a problem at the time (within the last decade) were the latter category becoming airBnBs and private equity investments because of their inherent value.
And those drive up the costs everywhere else, making everyone and everything clamp down because you can only take advantage of investment bubbles by leveraging debt, which is not a strategy people in need of housing csn make.
Which perpetuates the feedback loop.
There are a surpluss of houses in the us, because private equity is hoarding it. The total number of vacant houses has gone up every year since 2009.
Clearly there isnt a population explosion making the housing supply tight and overall empty houses that becoming occupied are being replaced with the now empty house they just moved out of.
And the empty house to homeless person ratio has been trending up for nearly 2 decades.