The U.S. Is Emptying: 11% of all Homes Vacant, Numbers Expected to Grow

Symptoms of American population decline are now painfully visible.

From Dateline Zero – CNBC’s real estate reporter Diana Olick writes, “I usually find the quarterly homeowner vacancy and homeownership report from Census pretty lackluster, but the latest one released this morning was anything but.”

According to the report, America’s home ownership rate, after holding steady for a while, took a pretty big plunge in Q4, from 66.9 percent to 66.5 percent. That’s down from the 2004 peak of 69.2 percent and the lowest level since 1998. Homeownership is falling at an alarming pace, despite the fact that home prices have fallen, affordability is much improved and inventories of new and existing homes are still running quite high.

“More concerning than the home ownership rate is the vacancy rate,” Olick observes. “The Census tables don’t tell the entire story, but they tell a lot of it. Of the nearly 131 million housing units in this country, 112.5 million are occupied. 74.8 million are owned, and that’s only dropped by about 30 thousand in the past year.”

Now to vacancies. There were 18.4 million vacant homes in the U.S. in Q4 ’10 (11 percent of all housing units vacant all year round), which is actually an improvement of 427,000 from a year ago, but not for the reasons you’d think.

“The number of vacant homes for rent fell by 493 thousand, as rental demand rose. 471,000 homes are listed as ‘Held off Market’ about half for temporary use, but the other half are likely foreclosures. And no, the shadow inventory isn’t just 200,000, it’s far higher than that.”

Olick goes on to say that less people are buying homes; and more people are renting. Furthermore, more people are renting apartments than houses. That stands to reason — unless you have a large family, a simple apartment seems more practical than an entire house.

But there’s something else happening. The population is in decline. As it is, the U.S. population was only being kept float by immigration. Birth rate has dropped below “replacement rate”, the rate needed to sustain a population, a while ago. But immigration has been slowing, too; largely due to the U.S. economy being less attractive (to put it mildly).

Earlier this year, a list was published of 7 U.S. cities that are actually running out of people. Reading the details of the list, you can see that this isn’t something suddenly happening. The American population “implosion” has been brewing for a while; and the symptoms are only just now showing themselves.

For example: In the 1970s, Buffalo lost more than 100,000 residents, roughly a third of its current population. It could have been easy to shrug that off and chalk it up migration into the suburbs, which was becoming something of a trend back then. However, it’s clear today that it was a symptom of another phenomena altogether: an American population decline.

SEE RELATED: 7 U.S. Cities That Are Running Out Of People

From that list:

1. New Orleans

Population: 354,850
Population Change 2000-2009: -128,813
Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -26.63%
Home Vacancy: 21.5%

New Orleans is unique in that its presence on this list is not due to industrial decline, but from natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of the city, caused by some estimates more than $80 billion in damage, and displaced tens of thousands of residents. The period of widespread homelessness, severe crime, and slow recovery has left the city as a shadow of its former self. While people are trickling back into the city, many will likely never return, and the city has lost more than a quarter of its population in just 10 years.

2. Flint, Mich.

Population: 111,475
Population Change 2000-2009: -13,266
Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -10.63%
Home Vacancy: 18%

While most of the cities on this list are here as the result of a general decline in industry, Flint’s woes have come almost entirely from one sector — the auto industry. Flint became a boomtown at the turn of the century as it became a divisional headquarters to the major American auto manufacturers, including Chevrolet, Buick, and General Motors. Between 1910 and 1930, the population had more than quadrupled due to the success of the American car business. Since the American auto industry began its decline in the 1980s, Flint has consistently lost at least 10% of its population each decade. Massive layoffs and plant closings have devastated the city, and unemployment rates remain well into the double digits.

3. Cleveland

Population: 431,369
Population Change 2000-2009: -45,205
Population Percent Change 2000-2009: -9.49%
Home Vacancy: 17.5%

Cleveland, the largest city on our list, was once a thriving manufacturing center, as well as an important point of trade because of its connection to several key routes, particularly Lake Erie. The city was once home to a sizable auto industry. Most of the largest companies that were once based in Cleveland no longer exist. These include Peerless, People’s and Winton. Cleveland also served as headquarters for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, as well as a key import location for coal and iron shipped from the South and Midwest. The decline of industrial American has hit the city particularly hard, and poverty, a default on municipal debt in the ’70s, and pollution have earned the city the nickname “the mistake on the lake.” In 1948, the city had over 910,000 people; it now has less than half of that.

Continue reading, from the full article at DATELINE ZERO.