We have been linking to CNN quite a bit lately, but they keep supplying good information! Today there’s a report that there are two million vacant homes for sale nationwide.
For purposes of comparison for the current situation, imagine the Detroit metropolitan area, which the Census Bureau estimated had 2.08 million households in its 2000 Census. Now picture virtually every house or condo empty, with a for sale sign in the front yard of every home, from inner-city Detroit to its suburbs, all the way to nearby cities such as Flint and Ann Arbor.
That puts things into perspective; 2 million homes is an awful lot!
Because the mortgage market meltdown has thinned the ranks of potential home buyers some home owners have been forced to move out of homes before they can find a buyer. And those who bought homes or condos as investments during the real estate and building booms of a couple of years ago have found an exceptionally weak market for their property. That in turn has lifted the number of vacant homes for sale by 57 percent in just the last three years. And some see the situation only getting worse.
This sounds just like a Ponzi scheme - the success of an individual is dependent on getting more people involved at the next level down. When the real estate party was going strong, it was difficult to find mainstream media reporting anything negative about what was going on with the real estate markets. This is what happens when everyone wants to (or in some cases has to) sell at the same time. The concept of supply and demand should straighten things out in no time.
“It’s very hard to see how this doesn’t get worse,” Baker said. “It’s certainly possible we could see 3 million, maybe 4 million (vacant homes on the market.)”
If you’re reading this post, chances are that you knew about this all along and wisely decided not to get involved (or if you did get involved, you knew when to cash out).
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