These are America's ten sickest housing markets. 1. Tucson, AZ Homeowner vacancy rates: 6.8% (1st) Rental vacancy rates: 15.9% (6th) Total housing units: 440,909 Unemployment: 7.8% Tucson's homeowner vacancy rate was 3.2% one year ago. It is now over double that. The city had a booming residential housing market before the crash. Since then, demand is so low that median home prices have dropped 18% in the past year and 33% since 2008. In addition, the city has among the highest rate of foreclosures in the country. 2. Indianapolis, IN Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.2% (5th) Rental vacancy rates: 13.5% (10th) Total housing units: 757,441 Unemployment: 7.8% The average home price has dropped by $20,000, or 15.3%, between the second quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year. Indianapolis's home vacancy rate of 5.2% is the fifth-highest in the country. Its rental vacancy of 13.5% of units is the tenth highest in the country. In 2009, while vacancy had not even reached its worst point, the mayor's office of Indianapolis recognized the serious problem the city faced. The city's plan to help solve the abandoned home issue states: "Indianapolis, like many communities, faces a significant challenge in dealing with vacant and abandoned properties. This challenge is exacerbated both by weaknesses in the local and regional housing markets — including an oversupply of housing relative to demand — and by the high and growing rate of foreclosures." 3. Memphis, TN Homeowner vacancy rates: 4% (9th) Rental vacancy rates: 13.5% (11th) Total housing units: 550,896 Unemployment: 10.1% Memphis's slow economic recovery has kept vacancy rates high. The metropolitan area's homeowner vacancy rate has increased from 2.5% in 2010 to 4% in the second quarter of 2011. In the city's defense, its rental vacancy rate has decreased from a staggering 21.2% in 2010 to 13.5%. This is still among the highest in the country, but it is an improvement. The unemployment rate remains at 10.1%, which is significantly higher than the national average of 9.2%. 4. Atlanta, GA Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.4% (4th) Rental vacancy rates: 11.8% (17th) Total housing units: 2,165,495 Unemployment: 9.7% Atlanta's homeowner vacancy rate of 5.4% is the fourth highest among major U.S. cities. The city, which had a significant influx of new residents, particularly from the northeast, has been hit hard. Atlanta's unemployment rate of 9.7% is well above the national average of 9.2%. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city had lost nearly 25,000 jobs between June of 2010 and June of this year. Between 2008 and the first quarter of this year, homes have lost more than a third of their value, dropping in price by nearly $50,000. 5. Baton Rouge, LA Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.9% (11th) Rental vacancy rates: 13% (12th) Total housing units: 329,729 Unemployment: 8.4% Baton Rouge did not emerge from the recession unscathed, but it did perform better than many other cities in the U.S., in part because it is the state's capital city and in part because of the money brought in through Hurricane Katrina recovery work. However, according to one local news station, the area has built more housing structures than it could fill following Katrina. The city has not been able to break free of this situation, as both homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates have increased not only since last year, but since the last quarter as well. 6. Dayton, OH Homeowner vacancy rates: 4.7% (7th) Rental vacancy rates: 10.7% (23rd) Total housing units: 385,160 Unemployment: 9.3% Dayton's home vacancy rate of 4.7% is the seventh-highest in the country among major cities. At one time, Dayton was a much larger city and an economic powerhouse. The Ohio city, which was a major manufacturing center, was at one point awarded more patents each year than any other place in the U.S. The city has a particularly bad unemployment rate of 9.3%. Median housing price, which stood at $109,000 in 2008, has fallen by 29%, or $27,000, between 2008 and the first quarter of this year. 7. Detroit, MI (Tied for 8th) Homeowner vacancy rates: 2.4% (32nd) Rental vacancy rates: 17.2% (3rd) Total housing units: 1,886,537 Unemployment: 11.6% The recession hasn't been kind to Detroit. Part of the Detroit-Warren-Livonia metropolitan area, it has been among the hardest hit cities in the country. Since 2005, the metropolitan area has lost approximately 323,400 jobs. Unemployment in the Motor City almost reached 30% in 2009. According to one estimate, the city had 90,000 abandoned or vacant lots or residential homes in 2010. One of the reasons the city is not at the top of this list is that the city had so many vacant properties that a huge portion of them were demolished. Regardless, at 17.2%, the rate of rental vacancy is still the third highest rate in the nation. 8. Kansas City, MO (Tied for 8th) Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.7% (13th) Rental vacancy rates: 11% (22nd) Total housing units: 883,099 Unemployment: 8.4% Kansas City's rental vacancy rate of 11% is the 22nd highest of any major city in the country, while its homeowner vacancy rate of 3.7% is the 13th highest. The city has a relatively high rate of unemployment, at 8.4%. While it's below the national average of 9.2%, it is well above the state average of 6.6%. The median home price in the city is down by $19,000, or more than 13%, since 2008. Most of that decline came in the last year. Between the second quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year, prices dropped by more than $25,000. 9. St. Louis, MO Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.3% (19th) Rental vacancy rates: 11.4% (18th) Total housing units: 1,236,222 Unemployment: 8.6% In 2008 and 2009, the St. Louis area has shed more than 82,000 jobs. This loss had a negative impact on the city's real estate market. Vacancy rates have continued to rise, increasing from under 2% one year ago to 3.3% in the recent quarter. The rise in vacancy rates has occurred while the median sales price for single family homes has fallen more than 19% since 2008. While rental vacancy rate, which is currently at 11.4%, has decreased slightly since the last quarter, it is still 1.6 percentage points higher than it was last year. St. Louis office vacancy rate is at 12.6%, according to real estate information company CoStar Group. 10. Oklahoma City, OK Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.2% (6th) Rental vacancy rates: 9.6% (34th) Total housing units: 539,077 Unemployment: 4.9% Oklahoma City had the sixth highest homeowner vacancy rate in the country as of the second quarter of this year. The city's unemployment rate is just 5.3%, but this low rate has not helped improve high home and rental vacancy. From last year, home sales in Oklahoma state dropped by 7.7%, according to the state's newspaper NewsOK. In the city, sales were flat from last year. Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, the median home price in the city dropped by more than 8%. ___
I was just in Detroit last week. It is stark how changed for the worse it is since I lived there in better days. You can readily see in the neighborhoods and on the freeways the obvious lack of money. I have said before Detroit unemployment was Depression-like.
I grew up in Dayton Ohio. From WWII through about 1973 Dayton was at it zenith. Headquarters to NCR. Delco, Delco Products, Inland, Frigidaire and many others had major manufacturing there and dayton was also home to all the support businesses that those big guys needed. WPAFB there as well. Dayton had about 250,000 people at its peak and it was an extremely clean and family oriented city. Except for the Air Force base, its all pretty much all gone. They have pumped a bundled into the downtown area to attempt a revival and its a ghost town. Entire neighborhoods in disarray. They now graduate less than 50% of their public high school "students" , drug trafficking is off the charts, crime overall is way up and the town is broke. Ignorance is the common denominator to most of our country's ills.
Used to call on NCR in the early 80s and I remember the immense presence they had in Dayton. I ran into a tourist at Treasure Island here in the beaches area and he was a pharmacist from Dayton and I joked that his is the one profession that might be benefitting from such a grim outcome in Dayton.