by Calculated Risk on 3/18/2011 04:27:00 PM

From Les Christie at CNNMoney: Nearly 20% of Florida homes are vacant

On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% -- or 1.6 million -- of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting vacant. That's a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years.
...
The vacancy problem is more dire in Florida than in any other bubble market: In California, only 8% of units were vacant, while Nevada, the state with the nation's highest foreclosure rate, had about 14% sitting empty. Arizona had a vacancy rate of about 16%.

Here is the data from the 2010 Census:

	Arizona	California	Florida	Nevada
Total:	2,844,526	13,680,081	8,989,580	1,173,814
Occupied	2,380,990	12,577,498	7,420,802	1,006,250
Vacant	463,536	1,102,583	1,568,778	167,564
Percent Vacant	16.3%	8.1%	17.5%	14.3%

Once all of the state data is released (by April 1st), I'll compile a comparison of vacant units to the 2000 Census data - and to the quarterly Housing Vacancies and Homeownership data (that is commonly used by analysts to estimate excess vacant units).

It is no surprise that Florida still has a huge number of excess vacant units.