America’s Vacancies

Image Credit: Getty Images, Thomas Hawk/Flickr

Whiles it’s no surprise that many of America’s cities are seeing a drop in their populations, a result of stagnant local economies, loss of jobs and fluctuations in the housing market, some of the locations that are seeing the highest real estate vacancy rates might come as a bit of a shock. When we hear about depleted metro areas, we think of Rustbelt cities like Detroit and Cleveland, not sought after locales like San Francisco and Miami, but this is the current reality as housing and rental pricing outpaces salaries.

Forbes recently compiled their list of “America’s Abandoned Cities,”  using the following methodology:

Our rankings, a combination of rental and homeowner vacancy fluctuation rates for the 75 largest metros, are based on year-over-year changes in the first quarter from the Census Bureau. Each metro was ranked on the year-over-year change in rental vacancy and homeowner vacancy rates; the final ranking is an average of the two.

As a point of comparison, the average homeowner vacancy rate in the US improved slightly from 3% to 2.7%, while the rental vacancy rate edged up to 10.2% from 10% a year ago.

Based on this data here is Forbes’ Top Fifteen:

1. Kansas City, MO
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Tuscon, AZ
4. Charlotte, NC and Dayton, OH (tie)
6. Springfield, MA and Albany, NY
8. Miami, FL
9. Salt Lake City, UT
10. Portland, OR
11. Seattle, WA and Poughkeepsie, NY (tie)
13. Buffalo, NY
14. San Jose, CA
15. Jacksonville, FL

[via Forbes]