Nearly 1.7 million homes sit empty in Florida. 16 million nationwide. What is going on?

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — There are more empty homes in Florida than anywhere else, according to a new LendingTree study of home vacancies across the United States. Overall, the study found more than 16 million houses sit empty across the country.

Florida’s rank among proportion of home vacancies from the study is also high. The Sunshine State has the sixth largest percentage of vacant units in the U.S. Its 17.13% vacancy rate sits behind only five other states, spread across the North, South, Midwest and Alaska.

The U.S. has a total of about 140.44 million homes, with roughly 124 million occupied. Here are the top 10 states by vacancy rate, according to LendingTree analysis of U.S. Census data:

Vermont (22.86%)
Maine (22.68%)
Alaska (20.51%)
West Virginia (18.12%)
Alabama(17.69%)
Florida (17.13%)
New Hampshire (16.74%)
Mississippi (16.26%)
Louisiana (16.21%)
Wyoming (15.88%)

Nationally, the vacancy rate is 11.66%, with 16,385,739 total homes missing residents, based on the LendingTree numbers pulled from data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Data in the LendingTree study comes from analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey with one-year experimental estimates.

Of the more than 16 million homes left empty of residents in the U.S., the largest number of empty homes is in Florida. With almost 1.7 million houses in the Sunshine State sitting empty, here are the top five states for home vacancies across the country:

1,680,844 in Florida
1,248,161 in California
1,216,084 in Texas
955,437 in New York
631,361 in Michigan

www.wfla.com/news/florida/nearly-1-7-million-homes-sit-empty-in-florida/

h/t BullionDude