New Jersey has the country's
third lowest home vacancy rate
ATTOM's third quarter report puts New Jersey at 0.5% vacant, behind only New Hampshire and Vermont, while the national rate held at 1.3%. Atlantic City posted one of the lowest abandonment rates among homes in foreclosure.
- ATTOM's third quarter report puts New Jersey's home vacancy rate at 0.5%, behind only New Hampshire at 0.3% and Vermont at 0.4%, while the national rate held at 1.3%
- Nationally, 259,666 of 104.6 million residential properties were in the foreclosure process, and 8,482 of those were abandoned before the case finished
- Atlantic City had one of the lowest shares of abandoned homes among properties in foreclosure, at 0.4% across the metro areas measured
Reported by ROI-NJ. Summary in our words.
New Jersey has one of the emptiest-house shortages in the country, and there is now a number on it. ATTOM, an Irvine, California property data company, put the state's home vacancy rate at 0.5% in its third quarter report, which ROI-NJ covered. Only New Hampshire at 0.3% and Vermont at 0.4% came in lower. Connecticut and Idaho tied New Jersey. At the other end, Oklahoma and Kansas both sat at 2.4%, nearly five times the New Jersey figure.
The national rate did not move. It held at 1.3% against the same period a year ago, even though vacancy fell in most states. ATTOM's chief executive, Rob Barber, said it remains very hard for buyers to find an empty home in most regions, and that with the rate under 1% in nineteen states the resulting bottleneck helps hold prices up. That is the mechanism behind a market that has felt tight for several years running: not a rush of buyers, a shortage of houses standing available.
The report also tracks abandoned homes in foreclosure, which the industry calls zombies. Out of 104.6 million residential properties nationally, 259,666 were somewhere in the foreclosure process in the third quarter, and 8,482 of those had been walked away from before the case ended. That is 3.3%, down slightly from 3.4% a quarter earlier and a year earlier. Among the metro areas with enough foreclosure data to measure, Atlantic City had one of the lowest shares at 0.4%, and Trenton was lower still at 0.1%.
One number in the report runs the other way. Homes held by institutional investors are vacant at 3.5% nationally, more than double the rate for housing overall, which says something about how those portfolios are managed rather than about the market they sit in. New Jersey is near the bottom of that list too, at 1.5%.
For an owner here, the useful read is not the ranking itself. It is that the thin supply people keep hearing about is measured rather than anecdotal, and that it is a statewide condition rather than a local one. What a specific house would bring still comes down to what has actually sold nearby, which is a different question and one worth asking before making plans.
Our take
When almost nothing sits empty, buyers compete for the few homes that do come up, and that competition shows in price. If you own in South Jersey and have been weighing a move, the shortage works in your favor.
Weighing a move this fall? Let's talk.
The vacancy and abandonment figures come from ATTOM's third quarter report and are national and statewide. They are not a count of vacant homes in any South Jersey county. General information, not advice about any specific property. The JK Realty Group, brokered with OMNI Real Estate Professionals. Equal Housing Opportunity. See our Terms of Use for how we source and credit these posts.
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