Abandoned Properties: The public health crisis that has seized Flint is only the latest struggle for the Michigan city, where one in six houses is vacant after a long period of decline.
The Flint metro area had the highest rate of abandoned properties in February at 7.5 percent, according to a RealtyTrac report that ranked metropolitan statistical areas with the most and least empty houses.
The real estate data company broke down the data by individual city for The Huffington Post, revealing a more extreme picture of abandonment: 9,800 homes are empty in Flint, 16.5 percent of all residential properties. At the city level, Detroit had the highest vacancy rate, with 53,000 empty houses, nearly one in five. Nationally, close to one of every 63 residential properties that RealtyTrac analyzed are vacant.
The company looked at data for about 85 million residential properties in large metropolitan areas and matched it to properties that mail carriers had flagged as vacant. They found that across the U.S., the vacancy rate is decreasing, which poses a challenge in cities where there’s a lot of housing demand.
Flint was one of a handful of places where there’s been little change since RealtyTrac last analyzed vacancy data in September, Vice President Daren Blomquist said in an email.
Most of the empty homes in Flint are “investment properties,” where owners live elsewhere and aim to rent them out. The ongoing water troubles has made it difficult, if not close to impossible, to sell a house.
Read Full Article [www.huffingtonpost.com]
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