Vacant Homes and U.S.’s Economic Outlook

Vacant Homes and U.S.’s Economic Outlook

Amid brightening hopes that the U.S. housing market is stabilizing, some economists are zeroing in on a piece of data that could augur badly for the consensus view: the homeowner vacancy rate.

That figure, an often-overlooked measure of how many homes for sale in the country are empty, has climbed to its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it four decades ago. Last week, the bureau said that in the final three months of 2006 there were about 2.1 million vacant homes for sale.

That brought the national homeowner vacancy rate to 2.7%, up from 2.0% a year earlier. Before 2006, the number had never risen above 2.0%. Like the housing economy more broadly, the measure varies by region: The South had a homeowner vacancy rate of 3.0%, the Midwest had a rate of 2.9%, the West had a 2.4% rate and the Northeast had a rate of 2.0%.

The report, which usually gets little attention, sparked fresh concerns about the housing market. Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius concluded in a report last Monday that rising vacancies signal that excess housing supply continues to grow — and that new construction has to decline further this year, even after a 13% decline in new home starts in 2006.  

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