The Top 10 Biggest Ghost towns in The United States

Foreclosures and evictions have become very common over the last few years. Poor lending practices, unemployment, and the explosion of the housing bubble are all responsible for the record number of evictions Americans have been forced to deal with. All of this has lead to a spike in the number of vacancies around the country because demand for homes is still very low.

A Forbes article I found online tells the story of the top ten emptiest cities in the United States. Placing first is Orlando, Florida. With an apartment vacancy rate of 23.6%, I was shocked to learn how deserted this city really is. I remember a time when developers considered Orlando to be an excellent investment. More information on Florida vacancies can be found on this entry I found on the blog Bubblemeter. Ranked second, 5.5% of Las Vegas homes and 13.5% of Apartments are empty. According to the census bureau, this percentage equates to about 7000 unoccupied homes. The rest of this list is pictured below. Although these statistics surprised me, each city’s rank was pretty predictable, with one exception.

I expected Detroit to have a much higher vacancy rate because of its dependence on the automotive industry. The drop in auto sales over the last few years has also reduced the demand for workers in Detroit. However, this state was still ranked in last place on this list. Nonetheless, Detroit is still a very “vacant” city when compared to the rest of the country