Investors Hold Most Empty Houses

Investors owned more than 882,300 vacant houses as of last year’s third quarter, according to the latest report from ATTOM Data Solutions.

That’s a scant 3.6% of the 24.9 million properties held by investors nationwide. But it’s a major portion of the nearly 1.4 million total residential properties that had no occupants at the end of September 2024. It’s also almost three times the 1.3% of all houses that are empty.

The states with the highest vacancy rates in investor-owned properties were: 

• Indiana (7.2%); 
• Illinois (6.1%); 
• Oklahoma (5.9%); 
• Alabama (5.9%); and 
• Ohio (5.8%). 

States with the lowest vacancy rates were: 

• New Hampshire (0.9%); 
• Vermont (1%); 
• Idaho (1.2%); 
• Utah (1.5%); and 
• North Dakota (1.5%).

ATTOM’s report analyzes publicly recorded real estate data collected by the analytics firm, including foreclosure status, equity, and owner-occupancy status.

The report shows that 222,318 properties across the country were in the process of foreclosure in the third quarter. Of those, about 7,500 — almost 3.4% — were so-called “zombie” properties that had been deserted by their owners.

That was slightly higher than the previous quarter, when 3.3% of pre-foreclosure homes were considered zombies.

ATTOM places an emphasis on vacant and abandoned properties because they “can hurt the value of surrounding properties and start a negative spiral in a local housing market,” noted CEO Rob Barber.

Fortunately, the overall rate of those houses “has remained remarkably steady,” Barber added. “While there remain some markets with worryingly high rates of vacancies, as a whole it appears that the nation’s buyers are quickly filling homes that become available.”

Quarter-over-quarter, the number of abandoned houses rose in 23 states. At the same time, 23 states and the District of Columbia had fewer zombie properties. In all cases, the changes up and down were minimal, according to ATTOM.