Nearly 11 Percent of US Houses Empty

[dkf]

"I usually find the quarterly homeowner vacancy and homeownership report from Census pretty lackluster, but the latest one released this morning was anything but.

America's home ownership rate, after holding steady for a while, took a pretty big plunge in Q4, from 66.9 percent to 66.5 percent. That's down from the 2004 peak of 69.2 percent and the lowest level since 1998.

Homeownership is falling at an alarming pace, despite the fact that home prices have fallen, affordability is much improved and inventories of new and existing homes are still running quite high.

Bargains abound, but few are interested or eligible to take advantage.

More concerning than the home ownership rate is the vacancy rate. The Census tables don't tell the entire story, but they tell a lot of it. Of the nearly 131 million housing units in this country, 112.5 million are occupied. 74.8 million are owned, and that's only dropped by about 30 thousand in the past year. 38 million are rented, but that's up by over a million year over year. That means more new households are choosing to rent."

http://m.cnbc.com/id/41355854

[msongs]

1. so far the market in our part of so cal has stabilized the past 6 months nt

[leftstreet]

2. LOL "choosing to rent"

After decades of shoveling the American Homeownership Dream on people, I seriously doubt they're just "choosing" to rent.

[notesdev]

3. I'd have bought a house if they didn't ridiculously inflate the prices

[2Design]

4. The rich own two or more houses - lots of empty houses with snowbirds

[lonestarnot]

8. And some of them don't know how many they fucking own. Lumpy McInsane.

[handmade34]

17. in Colorado

last week, found myself in a high end ($1mil+) development where the manager said that all houses were 2nd and/or 3rd houses and no full time residents... we are a sad, sad society

[Heywood J]

22. Of course, giving out that info

is just asking for the residents to be burgled...

[handmade34]

25. my job is to

get all that info... would never give addresses (unless it helped the Revolution ;-) )

I sign confidentialality forms and go through serious gov't background checks... I'm safe / or so they think!!

[grahamhgreen]

5. The selfishness of having empty houses and homelessness will be stuff of legends in the future.

[DeSwiss]

6. A new paradigm for civilization is now required.....

...and I'm afraid that if we don't make an attempt to achieve it now, that we won't get the chance again. It should be apparent to everyone by now that capitalism is a failed system. It can't be fix because it could never work to begin with. It's primary function was and still is -- always about "legal robbery" by the rich.

- K&R

Rising Above Politics

No matter what liberals may think, it’s no crime to be dumb and unaware in this world. Otherwise most of this country would be in prison. So when I saw Big Larry mowing his lawn yesterday, probably for the last time, I just waved and pretended that everything was hunky dory. Both of us knew everybody in town saw that foreclosure block ad on the back of the paper. We have come to watch for them of late, like the obits, to see if anyone we know has been axed by fate. But sometimes you show a working man respect by giving the A-OK sign -- a sign that, bad as it may be now my brother, you’ll be back to fight again for the feudalistic delusions and promises America has ever offered to working class suckers like us, because there has never been any other choice. There have just been the good times and the bad times allowed us, according to the American financial syndicate’s needs at the time.

Sure, they may kick a lot of Republicans asses out of office next election. Big friggin deal! For my people, the same feudalist deal is on the table as ever: work hard, kill when you are told to, trust your betters, and everything will be all right. Plenty of highly politicized leftists and their meeker kin, the last hopeful Democrats, came up as hard as anyone I’ve described here. The Democratic Party definitely doesn’t want them showing up like bikers at a cocktail party and talking real populism. Because there ain’t no big money campaign contributions behind populism.

Look at it this way: Black America suffered lynchings, police dogs and fire bombings just to shit on the same toilet seats as white Americans like you and me, and ultimately waste their lives in front of computer monitors next to us on the same electronic plantation of the gulag global economy swallowing America and the rest of the world. And so, still I ask (and who am I to ask anything?): Are there any progressives or leftists willing to come out here into the hinterlands and offer the first step. True populist hope? Spell it out in “see-spot-run” language? Talk about our bad teeth and why our elderly parents are rotting in pisshole nursing homes owned by ex-car dealers and attended by imported Asian physicians who barely speak English? Or the dynamics of hopelessness that drive the meth epidemic out here?

It will take an entire lifetime of commitment amid a crumbling world. And it will continue to crumble around us even as we work. There will be not one ounce of glory or acknowledgment or public reward. But it lies there before us, the first fearful and questioning stone on the pathway to the liberation of mankind. True populist politics could give us a quarter turn in the right direction. Genuine socialism could put us on the approximate path to justice. Eco-politics cannot save us from the inevitable, but at least it can teach us to deal with our limitations as a species upon this earth. But one begins the journey at the start of the path, not the promised land at its end. Can we quit talking and start walking now?

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/05/rising_above_po.html">~Joe Bageant, May 2007

[lonestarnot]

7. dkf

did you put up an unemployment thread within the last 2 weeks?

[dkf]

9. Not sure when I did, but it was about the way they calculate it via the survey.

If that is the one you are wondering about...

[lonestarnot]

10. Not sure was there a 44% in it anywhere?

:P

[dkf]

13. This is the article I am thinking of but no 44%

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/unemployment-rate-most-persistent-myth_n_806692.html

[lonestarnot]

16. Thanks dkf.

Not the thread I was looking for, but appreciate your help. Thanks.

[defendandprotect]

11. k/r

[RKP5637]

12. And yet builders obsess with building new homes. We are so lopsided in our

priorities in the US and resource management. We should be retooling builders and labor to rebuild the infrastructure.

[dkf]

14. Would these businesses even be eligible to get these contracts?

It seems out of their wheelhouse and I'm not sure we want newbies building bridges.

[RKP5637]

15. I think in some areas there could be crossover training for many activities. There's

a lot of electrical work, plumbing, etc., etc. Many with skill sets in one area are portable with some training to other skill areas.

[Fumesucker]

18. Renovation and upgrading is a different and far more difficult skill set than building new..

I've done both and there's no contest, major renovation or upgrading requires a lot more in the way of skills and equipment than does building a new home.

When I built new stuff often you only needed a few tools and the work could mostly be done by low skilled workers, when doing renovation on the other hand it often seemed that we had every tool in our trailer out on the job and just knowing which tool to use in which situation was often difficult.

It's a bit like the difference between working on an assembly line building cars and being a skilled diagnostic mechanic, in the one case every move you make has been planned out for you in advance and in the latter case you have to use knowledge, observation and logic to chart your own course toward getting the job accomplished.

[RKP5637]

19. Yep Agree! I was just thinking earlier today with the growing existing housing stock

and all of the infrastructure that needs repair/rebuilding there's going to be a lot of need for the major renovation or upgrading type skills you were talking about. Yep, no doubt, renovation requires a lot more skill than building anew.

[Fumesucker]

20. There was an article on GD yesterday talking about Gen Y males have lost a lot of old skills..

Skills like carpentry, plumbing and so forth..

I have no idea who is going to do all this renovation if such ever takes off in a major way, the population seems to be losing the skills.

We had a 10x6 enclosed trailer just packed with tools when I did renovations, a lot of kids these days wouldn't even recognize half of them.

Oh, and get the fuck off my lawn you young whippersnappers. :evilgrin:

[RKP5637]

21. Yeah, I'm always amazed at how little skills people seem to have today for

carpentry, plumbing and so forth... When I grew up most people I knew were damn handy and were not hacks. I guess it was just a different era.

[Broderick]

23. I see so many new housing developments

while very nice homes sit idle and decay over time in many more established neighborhoods. Meanwhile, there are so many without a roof over their head. Many of these decaying homes are sitting on the books of government tax seizures, government assisted loan foreclosures, and bank foreclosures waiting to be processed by those lucky Realtor offices that have a hand in moving government seized homes - listing hundreds with outlandish values on them. To get that gig, one must be connected to some politician - list hundreds of homes with nary a sign or advertisement. These viable homes continue sitting vacant, and the process to buy through government bid processes is obscure and difficult to meander without the right connections to get the properties at a reasonable value. The ones in the know, know how to meander that process and steal the homes - renovate on the cheap and dump below what even the original asking price by the government was once fixed up. It's sad that we have all these homes and so many people that need affordable housing or who would be willing to purchase at reasonable amounts to get a fresh start from ruined credit, etc...

[JuniperLea]

24. States lose on property taxes...

When houses remain empty.