If you’re looking for vacant housing, there’s one Alabama metro area with more options than many of the cities across the U.S.
According to Anytime Estimate, a real estate and loan website, Birmingham is one of just seven cities out of America’s 50 most populous with an overall vacancy rate higher than the national average of 11.6%. Nationally, 5.8% of rental units are vacant, while 1.4% of homeowner units are unoccupied.
According to the site, more than 16 million housing units in the U.S. are vacant. To find the areas with the highest vacancy rates, the site looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Zillow, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Metro areas were ranked by the overall number of vacant housing units among homeowners and renters. Those numbers were then compared against homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates, which measure the proportion of unoccupied homeowner and rental inventory.
The analysis found that the majority of areas with high vacancies are located “in tourist-centric regions that tend to have vacancies associated with unused seasonal homes.” For example, four out of the seven cities with vacancy rates exceeding the national rate are in Florida. Other areas with high vacancies have seen industrial decline and high unemployment.
Birmingham ranked fourth among metros with vacancy rates higher than the national average.
Orlando was tops at 15.2%, followed by Miami at 14.75% and Tampa at 13.71%. The Birmingham metro area registered 13.2%, followed by New Orleans at 13.1%.
Most of those vacancies in the Birmingham area appear to be among rental properties.
Birmingham did not place among the top 10 metros with homeowner vacancies, but was third among rental vacancies. Once again, Orlando placed at the top, with 9.7% rental vacancies, followed by Houston, with 8.5%. Birmingham finished third, with 8.1%.
The Birmingham metro area’s homeowner vacancy rate was 1.8%.
