Trulia: Census Data Reveals Low Residential Vacancy in DC

• October 12th 2011

by Shilpi Paul

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DC has the ninth lowest residential vacancy rate among U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a report recently released by Trulia. At 5.5 percent, DC’s vacancy rate is well below the national average of 7.9 percent.

After mining the Census Bureau’s housing report, Trulia economist Jed Kolko calculated the vacancy rates for all the metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million. DC and Boston were the only east coast metros to break into a top 10 largely dominated by west coast locations.

Kolko told UrbanTurf that he calculated the rate by tallying up “total vacancies minus seasonal/recreational/occasional-use homes and then dividing that number by all housing units.” Total vacancies by Census standards include all homes up for sale, for rent, sold and rented homes that are vacant, abandoned homes and properties for seasonal or recreational use.

More from Kolko:

Looking across all metropolitan counties, the pattern is clear: vacancy rates are lowest along the West Coast, Northeast and upper Midwest (Wisconsin and Minnesota), and highest across the South, the rustbelt Midwest (Michigan, Ohio and Indiana), and the Southwest (Nevada and Arizona).

Vacancies reveal and impact the health of a housing market in several ways as they can push down home prices and discourage development in surrounding areas. The Trulia analysis comes on the heels of a report released a week ago by Delta Associates, which revealed that DC’s rental vacancy rate was the second lowest in the nation.

In related news, the Census also reported that 58 percent of households in DC were renters in 2010. Though renters outnumbered owners last year, both the number of owner-occupied units (+10.7 percent) and the homeownership rate (+1.3 percent) increased between 2000 and 2010.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/trulia_census_data_reveals_low_residential_vacancy_in_dc/4324.