The United States faces a shortfall of millions of homes even as data show roughly 15 million housing units are classified as vacant, a discrepancy that experts say reflects differences in location, condition and market role rather than a simple surplus that can be reallocated to people who need housing.
Policymakers and advocates point to a rising need for housing and worsening affordability: estimates indicate the country needs more than 4 million additional housing units to meet demand, rent burdens are at record highs and the official homeless count topped about 770,000 people last year — the highest in modern history. President Donald Trump has suggested the possibility of declaring a national emergency to address the crisis, while local officials and nonprofits continue to pursue targeted solutions.
Experts say the headline number of vacant homes can be misleading because the Census Bureau’s housing survey counts as vacant any housing unit with no usual residents at the time of interview. That definition captures a wide range of units — from apartments between tenants and seasonal vacation homes to long-term abandoned properties and units held off the market by investors. LendingTree, which compiled the 15 million figure, found that more than a third of those vacant units — over 5 million — are concentrated in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, but the composition of vacancies varies widely across markets.
Roughly 28 percent of vacant units in the 50 largest metros are empty because they are on the market and available for rent, reflecting normal turnover in a functioning rental market. Another 20.7 percent are seasonal or occasionally used properties such as second homes in vacation destinations. A healthy rental market typically sustains vacancy rates of 3 to 5 percent to allow for tenant churn and property maintenance; markets with vacancy rates below that level tend to see upward pressure on rents.
Where vacant housing can be part of a local recovery, officials and advocates say addressing blight and abandonment remains vital. Detroit and Baltimore are often cited as examples where longstanding vacancies are tied to public disinvestment, the subprime mortgage crisis and population loss. Detroit’s land bank model, backed by federal and local funding and revenue from property sales, has aimed to resolve ownership issues, demolish or stabilize unsafe structures and sell properties "as is," often requiring buyers to bring them up to code. Since 2014 the land bank has acquired and disposed of more than 115,000 properties, demolished over 27,000 structures and sold about 20,000, and it reduced its inventory from roughly 45,000 vacant homes to fewer than 4,500, with nearly 1,700 properties in the sales pipeline.
Baltimore faces a similar challenge. The city has roughly 13,000 vacant homes, many of them attached row houses whose deterioration can damage neighboring occupied units. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore pledged last year to eliminate 5,000 vacant properties across the state over five years, a plan that would combine state funds, city resources and private investment but faces bureaucratic hurdles including permitting and property-acquisition complexities.
Those place-based efforts can stabilize neighborhoods and encourage private reinvestment, but they do not translate into immediate housing for people priced out of high-cost coastal markets. Vacant vacation homes in seasonal markets or empty luxury condominiums in global cities do not solve shortages in places where demand and prices are highest.
Speculation and investor behavior add another layer. Economists and housing policy experts say absentee ownership and investor holding patterns are most acute in higher-end segments of the market. George McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, said vacancy rates rise up the rent ladder, with investors buying units as stores of value rather than for occupancy. The rise of short-term rental platforms and institutional capital in housing has intensified those dynamics in some cities.
Several jurisdictions have tried policy responses aimed at speculative vacancies. Vancouver, British Columbia, enacted a vacant homes tax that pushed many condos back onto the rental market by imposing costs on owners who leave properties empty. Oakland and other U.S. cities have adopted similar measures or escalating property tax surcharges for long-term vacant properties. Washington, D.C., has laws that impose higher taxes on unoccupied buildings, but enforcement has been uneven: a 2022 lawsuit revealed a building owner had falsely claimed occupancy for more than a decade, and the city later secured a $1.8 million judgment.
Policy experts say combining tax penalties with transparency measures — such as requiring disclosure of beneficial ownership behind shell companies and LLCs — can help cities identify and deter speculative holding. Homestead exemptions that lower taxes for owner-occupants, thereby effectively raising the tax burden on absentee owners, are another tool cities and states sometimes use to change incentives.
Beyond residential units, the pandemic-era decline in office demand has prompted discussion of converting vacant office space into apartments. About 12.5 percent of national office space is vacant, roughly a billion square feet, suggesting a potential pool of underused real estate. But adaptive reuse faces engineering and economic barriers: office buildings often lack sufficient plumbing, units with natural light and layouts conducive to residential life, and conversions can require substantial public subsidies or incentives to be financially viable.
Local officials and developers who work on rehabbing abandoned buildings say scale is a constraint. Developers like Fabio O’Donnell, who runs the Housing Revival Project, say available funding generally favors established housing assistance organizations, making it harder for smaller developers to contribute to new supply. Even in cities where reclamation programs function, the levels of investment required to address deep blight and create affordable units exceed most current budgets.
Analysts and local policymakers emphasize that vacant units — whether seasonal, between tenants, blighted or held as investments — are pieces of a complex housing landscape rather than a switch that can be flipped to produce millions of affordable homes. Efforts to reduce speculative vacancy, remediate urban blight and convert underused commercial real estate can contribute to local supply, but experts say the central imperative remains increasing the pace and scale of building homes in the places where people are seeking to live.
"There’s no silver bullet," McCarthy said, noting that policy mixes that include taxation, transparency and targeted subsidies can reduce some wasteful vacancy. The broader housing shortage, however, will require sustained public and private investment in construction and preservation in high-demand communities.