Housing occupancy declines, As rentals go up

Empty homes have been on the rise since the recession
and real estate bust, but occupancy is starting to pick up in some places —
largely because of soaring rental demand.

• 

Rental occupancy is at 98% in the Tacoma area,
which boasts a large military community.

Neighborhoods from Tacoma, Wash., to New York’s Bronx
borough and parts of Albuquerque are showing an uptick in occupied housing,
according to an analysis of U.sS. Postal Service data.
“There are quite a lot of variations in how metropolitan
areas are weathering the current economic conditions,” says Justin Hollander,
urban planning professor at Tufts University who led the research conducted with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Hollander studied data on mail delivery to residences in
nearly 30,000 ZIP codes in the contiguous 48 states during the housing boom and
collapse. When a unit is vacant, the Postal Service scratches the address off
its delivery list.
Occupied housing has declined in about a third of ZIP codes
since 2009. From 2000 to 2006, before the recession hit, there were 26% fewer
postal areas that experienced an increase in vacant homes.

Widespread decline

Percentage of ZIP codes that registered a net decline in housing occupancy
from February 2009 through February 2011:

Suburban areas, where most new residential development was
concentrated during the real estate boom, were hit hard: The number of ZIP codes
in the suburbs that suffered drops in occupancy grew the most in the latter half
of the decade.
“Across the southern United States from Atlanta to Fort Myers (Fla.) to Phoenix, massive new housing
developments are largely unoccupied, while older housing is abandoned due to
foreclosure,” Hollander says.
But the nobody-home phenomenon haunting more and more
neighborhoods across the USA is reversing in some cities:
•Tacoma, Wash. The merger of Fort Lewisand McChord Air Force Base into joint last year has created one of the largest military
facilities in the world.
A community now numbering almost 34,000 active-duty
military personnel and 5,100 reservists, 49,500 family members, more than 29,000
military retirees and 15,000-plus civil service personnel and contractors all of
whom need housing.
“Our rental market is very strong,” says Raelene Rogers of
McCament and Rogers, a real estate consultant in Tacoma and the suburb of
Lakewood.
So strong that rental occupancy is at 98%, she says.
A condominium project in downtown Tacoma has been converted
into a 50-unit rental and is filled, mostly with military.
Over the past several months, 30,000 military contractors and
others have needed temporary off-base housing.
The city has not been immune to housing market woes,
however. Prices have fallen 30%.
“People who couldn’t sell their houses are renting,” Rogers
says.
•The Bronx. Astronomical housing prices in Manhattan
have pushed residents — many of them Dominican immigrants — into the adjacent
borough.
“Many are priced out as Manhattan continues to gentrify,”
says Bronx Councilman James Vacca. “In South Bronx and West Bronx, there’s a
pent-up demand for rentals.”
The housing market soared in 2002, as the demand for home
ownership was so high that older single-family homes on big lots on the east and
north sides were torn down and three or four new ones built in their place.
Housing units multiplied so much that Vacca led the charge to limit development
through zoning changes.
“Many of these row houses that went up came without parking
or adequate parking,” he says. Some units had nine cars per household.
Hollander’s analysis shows some Bronx ZIP codes have added
more than 1,000 occupied units since 2006.
•The New Orleans hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005 and housing occupancy plummeted in
almost every ZIP code from 2006 to 2009. In 70117, home of the decimated Lower Ninth Ward
, the number of occupied homes dropped by more than 9,500 during
that time.
There are signs of recovery: 1,799 more occupied units in
that ZIP from 2009 to 2011. In 70122, where the Gentilly Terrace and St. Bernard
Area neighborhoods are, there were almost 3,500 more occupied housing units in
2011 than in 2009.
•Albuquerque. Janice McCrary, executive vice
president of the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors, does not mince
words: “New-home building is probably dead in Albuquerque.”
Yet one ZIP code (87114) on the city’s far west side has
added more than 3,800 occupied units since 2006. Others, in older, more
established neighborhoods, have added more than 700.