OfflineMiami-area home sellers looking to unload their properties might want to make sure they have comfortable couches.
It looks like they're going to be there a while.
That's because Miami tops our list of the nation's most sedentary housing markets. These 10 spots feature a potent mix of dropping prices and sluggish sales rates. Also on the list: Denver, San Diego, Baltimore and Chicago.
Slideshow: America’s Worst-Selling Housing Markets
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In compiling our list, we looked at price growth and sales rates in the country's 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas. We took the cities in the midst of year-over-year price declines, based on National Association of Realtors data, then calculated how quickly these cities are shedding inventory from their peaks, which occurred between four and six months ago, based on data from ZipRealty, an aggregator of multiple listing service data. Atlanta, a likely contender for the top ten, was not considered due to irregularities in inventory reporting.
By using sales rate, instead of the months remaining of inventory, we wind up with a figure that shows how quickly homes have been leaving the market from its most saturated point, the most straightforward indicator for measuring sedentary vs. active sales.
In Chicago, for example, where the median home sale price in the fourth quarter of 2007 was $261,000, a 2.6% drop from the previous year, there were 72,842 homes on the market, with 2.2% of them selling each month.
While this sales rate alone isn't extraordinary, it matters because Chicago's housing supply is overstocked, with 50% more houses on the market than two years ago. Prices, as a result, are continuing to sink.
Behind The Numbers
It's important to note that housing markets never contract to zero inventory. Their inventory cushions also differ. From 2002 to 2006, New York had an average unsold inventory rate of 1.7%. But another healthy market during that time, Charlotte, N.C., maintained a 2.9% unsold housing inventory rate.
"Every market is a little bit different," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a Manhattan-based real estate appraisal company. "But while faster sales don't necessarily mean a bottom is around the corner, it is a significant reversal." That's because prices typically go up after inventory goes down.
Another important point is that the country's most sedentary housing markets are not the ones with free-falling prices.
Some of the country's more active markets are Las Vegas and Sacramento, Calif., where houses are moving off the listing pages at monthly rates of 3.4% and 4.2%, respectively, from their peak inventory gluts.
But both those markets were dramatically overbuilt during the boom, and sales are largely a result of homeowners slashing prices. In Sacramento, 50% of area homes have been marked down from their original listing prices; it’s 48% in Las Vegas, according to ZipRealty.
Chicago-area sales are more sluggish, but even though prices have declined (they are down 2.6% for the year), they're nowhere near the double-digit falls seen in Las Vegas and Sacramento.
The markets that are really in trouble are those in Florida, which have experienced all the overbuilding and lending problems of Las Vegas and Sacramento but are experiencing flat sales. In September 2007 in Orlando, No. 2 on our list, there were 35,365 homes on the market. Since then, available inventory has shrunk at the excruciatingly slow monthly rate of 0.6% per month. It's the same story in Miami, where homes have been selling at an underwhelming rate of 0.2% per month.
Miller says there's generally a three to six month lag between when a city starts putting a serious dent into its inventory and when prices start to improve.
For these 10 markets, that moment can't come soon enough.
Slideshow: America’s Worst-Selling Housing Markets
Anita
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TWITTER - anitarny / FACEBOOK - anitarny
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION"
Wow,
Anita, I think we should take a road trip to Florida with a little spending money in our pocket, don't you?
No, but really, those statistics are kind of sobering. Hope things pick up for their economy. But now would be the time to look, wouldn't it.
Rina
"Obstacles can slow you down, but they can only stop you with your permission." Dean Graziosi (BARM pg 101)
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
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Rina its almost the same here in California. I post the deals I have been finding and I have been getting skepticiam from other, but the truth is, the market here is in a fast downward spiral and houses that sat at 1 million dollars a year ago can be had for around 400-550K now and houses that were average priced at 350K (4br/2.5 bath) are now anywhere from 175K - 270K on average. Now that may not be all over Cali but it is that way where I am.
Anita
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TWITTER - anitarny / FACEBOOK - anitarny
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION"
Exactly why it is time to be buying now.
IAs I said I cant speak for other places but where I live the market is dropping lower and lower every day. Hume owners are facing foreclosure at an alarming rate here and they are more than willing to work with you. So if you are asking why it is a good time to buy now...all I can tell you is that where I am it is truly a BUYERS market.
Anita
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TWITTER - anitarny / FACEBOOK - anitarny
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION"
As I said I cant speak for other places but where I live the market is dropping lower and lower every day. Hume owners are facing foreclosure at an alarming rate here and they are more than willing to work with you. So if you are asking why it is a good time to buy now...all I can tell you is that where I am it is truly a BUYERS market.
Anita
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TWITTER - anitarny / FACEBOOK - anitarny
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION"
Lancaster tops county in empty homes
Southern California average half of Antelope Valley city's
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Wednesday, May 6, 2009.
By JAMES RUFUS KOREN
Valley Press Staff Writer
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LANCASTER - Home foreclosures and hard times have hit neighborhoods across California, but new numbers from the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau show Lancaster has a higher percentage of vacant houses and apartments than the rest of Southern California and Los Angeles County.
In the first quarter of 2009, 3.16% of residences in Lancaster and nearby unincorporated areas were vacant. In Southern California as a whole, only half that many - 1.58% - are vacant.
Palmdale, too, has a higher vacancy rate than the region, but by just a sliver - 1.6% of Palmdale residences are empty.
Vacant homes are a problem the city is trying to deal with, said Jason Caudle, assistant Lancaster city manager, citing the city's program to purchase foreclosed homes and resell them to qualified buyers.
"The more vacancies we have, the less people we have in homes, the more cause for concern," he said.
Caudle said he could not pinpoint definite causes for why Lancaster has so many more vacant residences than Palmdale.
"I would assume being an older community might have an impact - we have an older housing stock," he said. "But I don't know there's any empirical date that can point to a reason for that."
While Palmdale has a lower vacancy rate, it's still easy to spot vacant residences in the city, said Mike McNeil, Palmdale's supervising code enforcement officer.
"We have two officers that that's all they do, five days a week: register vacant properties," McNeil said. "We have hundreds of houses."
He said most streets have at least a few vacant residences and that in some parts of town, like the stalled Anaverde master-planned community, five or six vacant houses could be found on every street.
Vacancies, he said, have led in some cases to vandalism. He said the city has hired a private contractor to clean up trash from lawns and to board up empty homes to prevent further vandalism.
Lancaster's vacant homes are found mostly in the central part of the city, according to the Census department and Postal Service data, which are broken into census tracts.
The Lancaster census tract with the highest percentage of vacant residences is between avenues M and K and between Sierra Highway and 10th Street West. The area, which has few single-family residences but several large apartment complexes, has a vacancy rate of 13.3% - of 2,177 dwelling units in the area, 289 are vacant.
But that area had the lowest vacancy rate in Lancaster at the beginning of 2008. In the first quarter of that year, only five residences were vacant - a vacancy rate of 0.2%.
While the apartment-rich area has many more vacant dwellings than the rest of the city - about one empty residence out of every eight - many other neighborhoods in central Lancaster have one vacant residence for every 17 or 20 residences.
Those numbers are still well above normal levels.
Every Lancaster census tract between 10th Street West and Sierra Highway has a vacancy rate higher than 4%, as do all but two neighborhoods between Sierra Highway and 40th Street East.
The west side of Lancaster has fewer vacant residences than the east side, but even so, only one census tract in the city, between avenues I and K and between 20th and 30th streets west, has a vacancy rate lower than 1%.
But while Lancaster's vacancy rate is higher than the rest of the Antelope Valley and Southern California, it is lower than its peak of 3.43%, hit in the second quarter of 2008.
The rate dropped to 2.86% by the end of 2008, but jumped again in the first part of this year.
Palmdale, with a vacancy rate close to that of the Southern California average, has 13 census tracts with vacancy rates lower than 1%.
Only two Palmdale tracts, east of 40th Street East and between Palmdale Boulevard and Avenue S, have vacancy rates at 4% or higher.
jkoren@avpress.com
Anita
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TWITTER - anitarny / FACEBOOK - anitarny
"FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION"