These dynamics are now moving in the right direction.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Over the past 12 months through Q1, the total US housing stock grew by 1.41 million housing units – new construction minus demolitions – according to the Census Bureau today. With an average household size in the US of 2.3 people per housing unit, this addition over those 12 months provided homes for 3.2 million people.
But in 2025, population growth faded amid a crackdown on illegal immigration. According to separate data from the Census Bureau, for the 12-month period through July 2026, the US population is expected to increase by only 757,000 people.
The total housing stock reached 149.0 million housing unit. These are single-family homes, townhomes, duplexes, ADUs, etc., and multifamily homes (condos and apartments).
Over the past five years, the total US housing stock grew by 7.4 million housing units – new construction minus demolitions. At average household size, this addition accommodates 17 million more people.
But over the 5-year period through July 2026, the US population grew by 10.4 million people, including the two-decade-record surge in 2023 and 2024 (my analysis).
Over the past five years, the housing stock has grown steadily and substantially faster than the population.
The vacant housing stock.
There were 11.9 million “year-round vacant” housing units in the US, or 8.0% of the total housing stock.
The vacant shadow inventory: Of those 11.9 million year-round vacant units, 6.4 million vacant housing units were held off the market for a variety of reasons, a portion of which constitutes the vacant shadow-inventory that will show up on the for-sale or for-rent market at some point.
Vacant housing units on the market for rent or for sale rose by 4.4% over the 12 months through Q1, to 4.7 million vacant housing units on the market, the most since two quarters in mid-2017, and before then the most since 2014, coming out of the housing bust.
Over the two-year period, they surged by 19.4%! But this time, population growth has slowed to a crawl.
With the for-sale market frozen and 2025 sales of existing homes down by about 25% from before the pandemic, and by 43% from the record in 2005, many wishful sellers of single-family homes and condos, after failing to sell their units at wishful prices, put their units on the rental market, hoping that this too shall pass.
The number of these “accidental landlords” has surged, Zillow found by the for-sale listings that didn’t sell, were pulled, and were then re-listed for-rent. For an overview of this situation, looking at for-rent and for-sale units combined eliminates this issue of vacant housing units shifting between categories:
Vacant housing units on the market for rent – including by “accidental landlords” – rose by 6.1% year-over-year to 3.67 million in Q1, not seasonally adjusted, the most since 2014.
Over the two-year period, for-rent units surged by 15.4%!
Vacant housing units on the market for sale jumped by 6.1% year-over-year to 1.0 million housing units, not seasonally adjusted. A sharp quarter-to-quarter decline in Q1 from Q4 is typical in these not-seasonally adjusted figures.
Over the two-year period, for-sale units surged by 37%!
And remember: a portion of what used to be vacant for-sale homes are now vacant for-rent homes that these “accidental landlords” shifted into the chart above:
What the US housing market needs more than anything is lots of new housing units, more supply, and even more supply, of all kinds, amid slowing population growth. And these dynamics are now moving in the right direction.
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Be careful what you wish for!! Slowing housing demand created by lower population growth creating lots of vacancies will lower house prices and rents. Most rental houses are owned by Mom and Pop landlords. Vacancies that are long-lasting will lower rents and start causing foreclosures and in general lower income of lots of landlords. We could end up with a 2008 housing bust that would contribute to a recession right when the average American is suffering from inflation. Worse case scenario is that states with lots of outmigration could start looking like some Italian towns with permanently vacant homes.
“…will lower house prices and rents.”
That is exactly what is needed. Rents soared during the pandemic, and home prices exploded. It was completely crazy. High housing costs take a huge bite out of the rest of the economy. But there won’t be a mortgage crisis; most mortgages are in the hands of the government, not banks, and the taxpayer doesn’t care. The taxpayer is watching Netflix videos.
A real housing bust could contribute to a recession, but not as much as the stock market can when the bubble implodes. But then maybe we’ll finally get inflation under control.
https://wolfstreet.com/2026/04/16/the-most-splendid-housing-bubbles-in-america-price-drops-gains-in-33-big-expensive-cities-march-2026/
Haha…….
the taxpayer doesn’t care. The taxpayer is watching Netflix videos.
Sad but most likely accurate.
Correction, those watching Netflix are not taxpayers who don’t care. Most likely they are tax recipients who don’t care, living off the government also, e.g., section 8 housing, snap, WIC, free cell phones, government employees, NGO employees, etc.
(1)
“…most mortgages are in the hands of the government, not banks”
Wasn’t this also the case in ’07, if we think about the GSEs as essentially arms of the government even back then? They certainly proved to be arms of the government in the end, when they required bailouts. There’s nothing stopping that from happening again.
(2)
But so far so good. Housing Bubble #2 is deflating slowly enough, in a job-abundant environment over the past 3-4 years, that the people sitting in negative equity have just enough incentive to stick it out, rather than letting foreclosure happen.
But your charts foretell falling rents. As increasingly negative cash flow makes the bleeding more severe for landlords, we should expect to see units appearing for sale at desperation prices, or just abandoned by landlords when the rent isn’t sustainable and there’s not enough equity to sell.
(3)
I appreciate your astute observation that housing units are increasing faster than population. However, if population growth is heading toward negative numbers (see recent fertility stats!) while we’re piling on additional housing units, it seems to set the stage for Housing Bubble #2 to exceed the magnitude and consequences of Housing Bubble #1.
The accidental landlords who overpaid cannot escape their mistake by renting into a falling rental market, in a country with soon-to-be negative population growth. Japanification, here we come!
1. The GSEs are now government entities. They are the government. Maybe someday, they’ll privatize them, and they’ve been talking about it, but even if they privatize them, the guarantee on the mortgages will still the government, it won’t be privatized. They want to privatize the revenues and profits, not the risks.
2. Commercial real estate already went through all that. Lots of big landlords went bankrupt or let the lenders take over their apartment buildings. The process works fine. Investors are going to lose some money, so what. And that already started several years ago.
This is my first post here, although I’ve been lurking for a while.
Honest question by a European: Do you truly think there is anything close to solid indications that your Japan-like scenario is realistic, the way things stand now?
Housing seems overpriced by around 20 to 30% at this time. Do we have any evidence that a slow (and I emphasize slow) return to something closer to the longer term trend line, more aligned to real income, would cause major deflation, and economic stagnation?
*Solely* due to housing values dropping?
For the sake of the younger generations, we need lower house prices and rents. Many of my friends can’t afford houses that just 6 years ago were perfectly reasonably priced.
Home prices have been detached from the wages because of financial regression policies of FED.
Home prices need to fall by 50% or so to make any sense.
A 50% decline would be a repeat of the 2008 crisis.
It would not because this time, banks are not on the hook. The government and investors are. So it won’t lead to a Financial Crisis.
Re: “Worse case scenario is that states with lots of outmigration could start looking like some Italian towns..”
The elites can easily fix that. Case in point: there are so many North Africans in Berlin that it no longer even remotely looks like Istanbul.
You’re not making sense on so many levels:
1) Abandonment of rural areas is not caused by migration but by urbanization, Japan is a good example: zero migration, loads of urbanization, multiple western countries are heading in the same direction including the US.
2) Elites don’t manage immigration, voters do, Zuckerberg & co couldn’t care less about mexican daylabor
3) Fewer than 1% of Berliners are from the continent Africa
4) Istanbul is not in North Africa
5) Turkish families make up about 5.5% of Berliners, most of whom arrived in the 60’s and 70’s to rebuild the country and have little to do with the modern immigration debate mostly relating to refugees of wars from the middle east (syria & afghanistan recently)
Your historical timeline is off and your reason for immigration to Berlin is wrong. West Germany was largely rebuilt after WWII by 1960. That’s when Germany turned into a world wide exporter. The reason for large immigration into West Berlin was immigrants to West Berlin were exempt from West Germany’s immigration laws. Most native Germans in West Berlin were moving to West Germany causing a projected population collapse. The building of the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s failure to defend Berlin against this Soviet blockade caused an exodus from West Berlin. Kennedy going to West Berlin and declaring himself a “jelly doughnut,” didn’t ease the worry of the typical upper middle class resident of West Berlin.
If mom and pop landlords bought before 2020 they should have plenty of equity.
If they bought recently that’s kind of on them for buying into a bubble or trying to get rich by buying sfh for airbnb. We should be able to correct 20% or so without a major crisis… things typically revert to the mean.
Who cares if the landlords fail? Who cares if home prices fall? Everyday people who (didn’t get caught up in pandemic FOMO) have been diligently making the house a home — as intended — would still be sitting on plenty of equity even if prices dropped 25-30%. Only those who are over-leveraged will be swept out to sea. Serves them right.
As for the landlords, GOOD! When there is no moral hazard/risk assumption and everybody from your Costco cashier and barber to your friend’s “looking for work” husband and Uber driver are openly discussing buying real estate/stocks with extreme leverage/debt and ZERO concern for downside risks, all of these people deserve to be wiped out. Put those assets back into the hands of sane and rational people just doing their best.
I’m really tired of the responsible people being the only ones getting screwed the last 20-30 years.
@SingleMaltScotch
I think you know the answer to your questions:
Who cares if the landlords fail?
Landlords
Who cares if home prices fall?
What do you mean by:
” responsible people being the only ones getting screwed the last 20-30 years.”?
My sister and brother and law are a perfect example of “responsible” people who never made a lot of money, they lived modestly and maxed out their 401Ks, 30 years later they have two paid off homes (their current home and their first that they kep as a rental) worth millions and even more in their 401k
Homeowners
I think the point is we could take away the pandemic run up and most people would be fine. They would still have plenty of equity in their homes.
It wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) impact their financial planning or retirement because an expectation of 30-50% growth in a 1-2 year time frame isn’t something people plan for.
Also for non investors, the market falling only matters if they’re selling and if they are selling it also just means their next home is cheaper…. so there is no real impact to those who just own 1 home. In fact prices dropping helps those home owners with property taxes and home owners insurance. The only time people would be impacted negatively is when housing isn’t a 1:1 transaction.
You just inadvertently proved my points. Thank you.
LOL! Screw the “rent-seeking” jackles and the bloated municipalities that have gotten fat on the backs of the average home owner ever-exploding property taxes based on bullshit valuations.
“Lower house prices and rents” is exactly what the producers in this country need. Screw the useless paper-pushing class. It’s about damn time. If you overpaid for your rentals you deserve what’s coming. Yes, there are many “mom and pop” landlords who didn’t participate in the bubble. Screw those who fed the greed and sloth.
Up near me in Sacramento they are trying to get approved a 9,400 home build out. Looks like it will not pass but would be an extra small city right on the middle of an already packed area as well as wipe out massive green areas. Can’t even imagine prices being affordable given cost to build, new roads, schools, parks and so on not to mention impacts on existing infrastructure. 25K more people just dropped into an area is noticable. Better to let Arizona and Nevada expand where plenty of land and water.
Plenty of water in Arizona and Nevada!?!?!? That’s a good one.
Yeah, i guess. Who would have guessed. Learn something new every day !
They grow lots of cotton in Arizona.
The Southwest has plenty of water but wealthy special interests are controlling how it gets consumed. Too much of it is being used inefficiently to grow crops for livestock in the middle of the desert.
Wolf,
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic with your closing comments. I don’t get it from a development standpoint. Why would builders want to put more houses on the ground if there’s a glut of vacant houses to compete against? This sounds like a game of musical chairs (again and again) with the housing industry. Would you invest in speculative home building right now? It seems like there is going to be a real reckoning next year with prices continuing to drop – regardless of new builds. Thanks.
Builders have to build. That’s their business. They cannot just shut down. They’re going to build and sell what they build. That’s what they’re doing right now, and they’re doing a pretty job at it. Their sales have held up. They’ve cut their prices — and some by a lot — and their profits have plunged. They’re competing against homeowners, and they’re gaining market share against homeowners. Homeowners just haven’t figured out yet.
Lennar’s home sales are rising from record to record, and it’s very aggressive in its pricing strategy. Homeowners have no idea what they’re up against. What it takes to sell homes in this market:
Profits may be declining at Homebuilders, but as long as they’re still making profits, they’ll build. Bring it on and saturate the market to get rent and home prices in better equilibrium with income levels which continue to rise, albeit slower than RE prices. It may pay to sit on the sidleines another year or 2.
Profits may be declining at Homebuilders, but as long as they’re still making profits, they’ll build. Bring it on and saturate the market to get rent and home prices in better equilibrium with income levels which continue to rise, albeit slower than RE prices. It may pay to sit on the sidleines another year or 2.
And if profits are positive but declining, that means that homebuilders should build as fast as possible before proces fall even more…
Your charts are valid where there is open land available. UP here in the central Colorado mountains, there is almost no open land, so to build a new house, you have to tear down an old one. Then you have $800,000 invested in your lot. Small builders do just that and sell the new house for $3M-$5M.
Plenty of land every where in USA. A lot of land can be opened looser zoning.
Only people with vested interest in RE says, you can’t create land.
You can’t create PRIME land (e.g., easily commutable to SF, NY, and other “everyone wants to live there” places).
But yeah, there’s plenty of land everywhere else, outside of protected lands.
That’s not correct. There is lots of prime land in urban cores being redeveloped into housing, happening all the time, such as old industrial, malls (they’re huge pieces of land, mostly parking, and the buildings are easy to bulldoze), old powerplants, warehouses, rail yards, ports, etc. There are 74,000 housing units in various stages in the pipeline in San Francisco right now, in all those kinds of spaces, some of them with nuclear contamination (being remediated) from the Cold War.
You could fit another 500,000 homes into NYC with almost no effort at all, within commuting distance and on already built train lines? The number is astronomical.
@Wolf when you write “The vacant shadow inventory: Of those 11.9 million year-round vacant units, 6.4 million vacant housing units were held off the market for a variety of reasons”
Does this mean that your data says 6.4 millions homes have been sitting vacant and off the market “and” 5.5 million homes have been sitting vacant and for sale or for rent for over a year?
Does your data list the number of “occupied” housing units listed for sale or rent. A large percentage of sellers never move out of a home for sale and I list all my rental units “for rent” as soon as I find out someone is not renewing their lease (and I lease almost all of them before the current resident moves out).
Had to read your question a couple of times to figure out what the question was. So I hope I got it. I had to delete my first answer.
There are two categories of vacant units: “Year-round” and “seasonal.”
So year-round does not mean they were already vacant for 365 days. It means they’re permanently vacant and are NOT used for seasonal stuff. The another category is seasonally vacant, such as vacation homes. I didn’t discuss that category.
This is not an “inventory for sale” data set. It’s a vacant housing units data set. The title of the data set is: “Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership.” If a unit is occupied, it’s just “occupied” either by the owner (85,963) or by a renter (46,084).
Suppose my question would be how many of those ‘vacant’ homes are actually livable as they sit or are so with minimal costs. Where I am there is a glut of vacant homes just outside of downtown, but most aren’t livable and they don’t turn. There was an attempt to get a program going in which the city would take vacant, dilapidated buildings and sale them to investors with strings attached (buyers meeting low income numbers/rental reqs, that kind of thing) but it died on the vine.
1. Decrepit abandoned properties are not counted in this statistic as “vacant home”.
2. There are always some properties that await demolition and new construction. This happens ALL THE TIME. And it has been going on forever. It’s the normal housing renewal process. And that is part of the figures. That’s a constant. It’s not new.
3. If you live in a devastated small town — because maybe the only big manufacturer shut down and there is no reason to stay there or move there — then maybe those homes won’t be rebuilt until demand shows up. That has been happening in places around the country for many decades, including Detroit. But if homes become abandoned decrepit wrecks, they don’t count in the data.
Amazing ramifications of an actual functioning border.
Don’t want to be political and I dislike Trump in general.
But thanks to him, border is closed/secured and lot of companies thinking outside the chine/other countries for manufacturing.
50% would make housing cheaper than 05. Housing has been in a decline in my area for 4 years. Wages haven’t kept up.
Where are you located ?
Hi Jon – I saw that article too, about people buying house kits from China. Makes sense.
Perhaps all of these white collar people who will get laid off from AI will take whatever money they have and start building houses from cheap materials from China.
Nice to see someone admit that despite their personal dislike, his policies are achieving much good. What most haters don’t get is the fact that many people like myself would prefer these policies in a nicer package but the gold is worth the grime.
First comment seemed to come from someone who overpaid for rental property, perhaps multiples. Old landlords like me may not owe much or anything on the house. I prefer balanced supply of houses to look for good renters who like what I have on offer. Too much of a housing shortage and you see desperate people emailing about places they can’t afford.
Builders have to build. That’s their business. They cannot just shut down. … their profits have plunged …
Hmm … why not? What makes builders increase inventory into a falling-price market especially when there is a significant lag time between the investment decision and committment, and the sale transaction.
“The price of doughnuts is falling, we’ll make more today at today’s cost and sell them next year. We don’t know how much we’ll get, but it’s likely less than we would get today.”
We may be underwater after we have paid off our construction loan (if we can get one).
I get, up to a point, that the pipeline must not freeze … but … adding to excess inventory with new spending … when the old stock with old sunk costs can just be repriced downward against me does not seem sensible to me.
If “new” is a selling point, renovation “just like new” can undercut it.
What am I missing?
“What am I missing?”
Everything. And you cherrypicked some phases out of context to suit your narrative.
Here is my entire paragraph, verbatim:
“Builders have to build. That’s their business. They cannot just shut down. They’re going to build and sell what they build. That’s what they’re doing right now, and they’re doing a pretty job at it. Their sales have held up. They’ve cut their prices — and some by a lot — and their profits have plunged. They’re competing against homeowners, and they’re gaining market share against homeowners. Homeowners just haven’t figured out yet.”
Doesn’t economic growth depend on population growth? Just like the economy grew after the population boom following WW2 doesn’t it contract if population levels decline? Seems like basic supply and demand. Hope it all works out for the best.
No, it depends on rising productivity and/or population growth, one or the other or both. Rising productivity is the good part about economic growth. Rising productivity creates wealth. Rising population makes the slices of that wealth smaller.
Plenty of countries have/ had rising populations (e.g. on the african continent) without sufficient economic growth.
But you do have a point. A rising population means rising demand for everything, and a rising labour supply. There comes a point where you have more adults (earners) but relaively less retired people (dependends).
That means a more productive population.
A country needs infrastructure and security to exploit that. Also a financial and political system to support it.
China did an amazing job at that. They might get a problem with their contracting population though.
A stable population in a stable country can work with rising productivity. But the challenge is that a contracting population will lead to lower demand and lower labour supply. And to offset that with productivity gains is almost impossible. Through export countries like Japan, Korea, Germany have an ample supply of demand abroad. But China is challenging that.
And the declining labour supply is offset via outsourcing labour intensive manufacturing. But that is only possible up to a point.
There is a lot of talk about the decline of the German economy and how its due to energy costor what ever. But I like the example of BASF.
BASF is basically the worlds biggest chemical concern. Ludwigshaven is a city build around the biggest chemical plant in the world.
BASF is making every year more profit.
At the same time, BASF is exporting less and less from Germany.
People point at the rising energy costs and war and lots of things. But even before that, BASF build hughe plants in the USA and in China. Why would they export stuff from germany when they can produce it close to the consumer? Energy prices is one thing, transportation costs and incentives are another.
China build out their domestic industry using incentives and exporting lots of stuff at a loss. Its a rats race trying to compete with that. Tariffs or import quotas or profiting from cheap as dirt stuff (eg. solar cells)
More producitvity isn’t going to bring BASF exports back.
Those multinational companies have shifted production since a long time. If they didn’t expand abroad, it would have been only a matter of time before domestic companies callenged them in their export markets. Neither China, nor the US would accept such a hughe dependecy on imports.
Rising producivity needs to offset the declining population to produce wealth. If suddenly ever earner needs to suppport 3 people (2 parents+ 1 kid) instead of 2 ( one kid of two and only half of their parents because you’ve got more siblings) You need to 50% higher productivity just to offset the demographic effect before any wealth is created.
And real time bomb is the infrastrucure debt. A big population build a lot of infrastructure with lifespans of 30-100 years, and suddenly your economy needs to maintain a lot of stuff thats overbuild for your current population and you still need to invest in new infrastructure.
So even steady rising productivity can lead to a longterm stagnating economy and might even lead to a death spiral where the working population faces constantly higher taxes and more and more people and money are needed to care for the old people leaving less people available to be active in the rest of the economy.
Thank you Wolf. Population growth by itself is irrelevant if all of the dynamics are not taken into account. If population growth were all that mattered then Mexico City should be the economic envy of the world.
Reading this from Australia where every government policy is designed to increase the price of the existing stock of housing and inflate the cost of new housing. It’s actually quite depressing to witness the decline in almost every other part of the economy because of this
The downtick in houses for sale and the uptick in houses for rent made me chuckle. Homeowners will do anything except simply lower the damned price, won’t they?
Yes and they’ll learn a hard lesson
1. Loss of capital gains exemption if they don’t live in the house 2 of the last 5 years
2. Deprecation recapture on any eventual sale
3. Damage to the property (I know a number of people who have had their places trashed by renters)
4. The trajectory of the next few years is flat to down (it won’t get better by waiting). i.e. those who wish they’d sold in 2021 will soon with they’d sold in 2025.
5. Rents are falling in a number of major metros
Where do environmental carrying capacity limits (or lack thereof) enter into this discussion. The Western states are currently facing potentially ongoing severe drought conditions with water rationing now kicking in in those areas with the least secure water supply situations (e.g., in Colorado those municipalities with the most junior water rights, most costly wastewater treatment, etc.). The endless pro-growth economic development (e.g., high-end real estate developers and increasingly-desperate fiscally-challenged states and municipalities incentivizers) keep turning blind eyes to these realities. At their cost. Wolf’s earlier post about the precipitously-tanking real estate brokerage stocks, including amalgamating in desperation recent IPOs like Compass are red flags.
I should add: Take a look at the cities in Arizona where new building permits have had to be terminated due to insufficient present and forecasted future water supply. Buckeye is one. There are others. The Colorado River is warning in its own way.
Buckeye never owned the water rights to allow those houses, and told those land speculation fools to go buy the water rights necessary. Instead they just found the next suckers. Scam has been going for a half century. Arizona has plenty of water, it’s only cheap for vested first owners and those sucking down aquifers (essentially water strip mining) in unregulated areas. Stop growing cotton and alfalfa and there’s plenty of water.
Cadillac Desert should be required reading for anyone in the colorado river basin.
California will be able to offset quit a bit due to water desalination.
There is a lot of potential water to be saved if certain states decide that free water for exporting Alfalfa or other crops is to expensive. The economic impact of low value crobs is neglible.
I can only shake my head at how america is using ground water as just a resource to exploit with little thought to the next generations. A shrinking water table is not sustainable. And if they would grow food that would be one thing.
there’s a guy(AI bot?) on youtube that monitors CO mountain town prices in a similar fashion to Wolf and his metro bubble stats.
Between covid inflation bubble prices, stricter anti VRB) laws and lack-a-snow these once high flying towns appear to be skydiving.
Is this mostly urban areas? In the small town area I live in (Pa.) when a house goes on the market it sells the same day a lot of times for more than the list price. There are very few that have been on the market for weeks but they are odd balls as they are way over priced or in need of repair. I have been paying very close attention as my son has been looking for a three or four bedroom house for months.
Scott,seeing homes move quickly in Boston burbs and in N.H.,at least semi-reasonably priced homes.
I have not seen the pricing on a lot of the homes so do not know how if by any the pricing dropped ,just see for sale signs and then a lot of pending within a week or two.
Where I live in coastal, suburban Florida, houses sit and languish on the market. 5% of the houses in my neighborhood are for sale and have been for months.
I think there are three factors: demographics, labor supply, and local policy. Immigration restrictions certainly cut into the first of the two. Builders in Sunbelt are having to contend with lower aggregate demand. Immigration restrictions alone are expected to cut down home formation by 20% over the next decade. In large metros that’s going to translate into modest dip of around 3% (magnified further in inflationary environment). Homes are no longer going to be stores of value but it’s going to take a while for people to realize this. In areas with smaller more moribund markets and lots of paid off homes it may be impossible to sell at any price, kind of like rural Japan. It may eventually come for markets in midwest and northeast too but right now it’s a tale of 3 markets.
The comment about a Colorado mountain town with 800k lots is likely a ski town where the wealthy gather to show off their wealth. It has as much relevance to the middle class as the huge yachts have to a modest cabin cruiser (used).
If you want a mountain town look at Maggie Valley NC. It’s a little scruffy but the elevation on the outskirts is high enough you don’t need AC. Plus there’s water, some times too much water but that’s better than none. High elevation lots won’t get flooded.
Ssshhhh don’t tell the internet about Maggie valley :) I want at least one good place on earth left when I retire
I wonder what affect the rise in oil prices will have on the RE market, especially with all these unsold homes. I see a lot of homes far from employment centers going down and into foreclosure. No one can afford these high prices and soon to be higher interest rates. Walsh is getting ready to raise rates as soon as he is confirmed. Residential Real Estate could be the worst investment going forward. It will be like 1981 all over again. ENJOY.
We’ve been looking to buy a house in the Charlotte, NC area for 7-8 months. Almost every single house we tour is vacant.
@DTH What is the price range of homes you are looking to buy? I have noticed that the more the expensive home the higher the chance the home is vacant when it was for sale (most people selling $2mm homes can afford to move out and most people selling $300K homes can’t).
Google gave me this:
While exact MLS (Multiple Listing Service) data varies by city and season, broader housing data and industry estimates suggest that approximately 60% to 75% of homes listed for sale are still occupied by the owner.
Over the last 40 years the percentage of homes for sale that are listed for sale vacant and “staged” seems to me like it has increased almost every year.
Good stuff
Thanks Wolf