The home ownership and vacancy rate statistics just came out this Monday for the fourth quarter of 2010. Some of it is expected and not so surprising while some stats are interesting to look into to further understand the current housing market and its consumers. Rental vacancies were put at 9.4 percent, a 1.3 point decrease from 2009’s fourth quarter, and home vacancies were set at 2.7 percent, relatively the same as in 2009. Since 1996, both rental and home vacancies have been on a slow but steady up-climb.
Rental vacancies were about the same for suburbs and metropolitan areas while home vacancies were higher in the suburbs and outside metro areas than the central metro areas. The Northeast holds the lowest rate of vacancies for both home and rental while the South is a leader in both.
Total US housing inventory has increased since 2009’s fourth quarter but only by about 650 units. The amount of those units occupied has actually increased but more by renters than actual owners. Units that were held off the market increased from 2009 to 2010 at 6,765 to 7,236, respectively.
Home ownership in the fourth quarter by region can be summed up by the following:
- Northeast: 64.1%
- Midwest: 70.5%
- South: 68.5%
- West: 61%
As seen above, the Midwest holds the highest amount of homeowners while, not too surprisingly, the West is at the bottom. All four regions have declines since 2009’s fourth quarter.
Families that have higher or equal to average income levels have seen a slight decrease in home ownership while families that have a lower than average income have actually seen a rise in home ownership. The thing to keep in mind when interpreting these statistics is that the Census Bureau imputed missing values from their income question of sent surveys to calculate this data. They configured the results using previous similar procedures and without this configuration, families with lower than average incomes would have also seen a drop in home ownership from 2009 to 2010.
All details and further statics can be viewed on the Census Bureau’s press release HERE
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