“Vacancy Rates Rise To 8% As Homeowners Move To Leasing” reports:
“It is a paradox and one that is bad for both the residential and housing real estate markets. Reis, an industry analyst group, says that the vacancy rate in the apartment sector rose 8%, the most in fifty years. Looking at the data, The Wall Street Journal reports that rents dropped 3% for the same period.
“The migration of people to rental properties should firm [occupancy], but that obviously does not happen. That means that there is an oversupply of apartments and homes for rent. This could be caused, in part, by the number of vacant homes on the leasing market. Almost all of them were owned by someone just a year ago.”
WATCHDOG: The reason for a drop of occupancy in homes and apartments is people are doubling up or returning to their parents’ home to save money.
Another reason why occupancy is dropping is that fewer people are divorcing. It’s expensive to divorce.
Worth every penny, one of my friends tells me, but expensive none the less.