Quantcast
Feeds: Email, RSS & Twitter

Get Our Videos By Email

 

8,300 Unique Visitors In The Past Day

 

Powered by Squarespace

 

Most Recent Comments
Cartoons & Photos
SEARCH
« Florida Condo For The Price Of A Car | Main | Ratigan To Barney Frank: The Financial Lobby Owns Your Committee (Must See) »
Saturday
Mar192011

Census Bureau: Nearly 20% Of Florida Homes Are Vacant

Source - CNN

(CNNMoney) -- It's not always easy to feel sorry for sunny Florida. But they just got hit with another blow.

On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% -- or 1.6 million -- of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting vacant. That's a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years.

"Housing went from being the preeminent investment of choice to toxic waste," added Richard DeKaser, an economist with the Parthenon Group.

The vacancy problem is more dire in Florida than in any other bubble market: In California, only 8% of units were vacant, while Nevada, the state with the nation's highest foreclosure rate, had about 14% sitting empty. Arizona had a vacancy rate of about 16%.

In Florida, the worst-hit county is Collier -- home of Naples -- with a whopping 32% of homes empty. In Sarasota County, 23% of the housing stock sits vacant, while Lee County (Cape Coral) has a 30% vacancy rate. And Miami-Dade County has a vacancy rate of about 12%.

Celia Chen, a housing market analyst for Moody's Analytics, is also downbeat in her forecasts for Florida. Not only will prices fall another 11%, she said, but the bottom won't hit until mid-2012, about a year later than the nation as a whole. Some metro areas won't get back to their pre-recession peaks until long after the present owners are old and gray.

"If you're buying in Florida for retirement," said Winzer, "maybe you buy next year when prices will be near the bottom. If you're buying for investment -- don't."

Continue reading...

 

 

Former Florida governor Charlie Crist gets distracted while inspecting beaches for oil with President Obama.

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.