America's Most Abandoned Cities
 

Vacancy rates in these spots spell lots of empty neighborhoods.
Call it a modern-day tale of two cities.

For decades, Las Vegas, ripe with new construction and economic development, burgeoned into a shimmering urban carnival. Detroit, once the fulcrum of American industry, sagged and rusted under its own weight.


These days, it's the worst of times for both.

Las Vegas edged Detroit for the title of America's most abandoned city. Atlanta came in third, followed by Greensboro, N.C., and Dayton, Ohio. Our rankings, a combination of rental and homeowner vacancy rates for the 75 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, are based on fourth-quarter data released Feb. 3 by the Census Bureau. Each was ranked on rental vacancies and housing vacancies; the final ranking is an average of the two.

Cities like Detroit and Dayton are casualties of America's lengthy industrial decline. Others, like Las Vegas and Orlando, are mostly victims of the recent housing bust. Boston and New York are among the lone bright spots, while Honolulu is the nation's best with a vacancy rate of 5.8% for homes and a scant 0.5% for rentals.

Still, empty neighborhoods are becoming an increasingly daunting problem across the country. The national rental vacancy rate now stands at 10.1%, up from 9.6% a year ago; homeowner vacancy has edged up from 2.8% to 2.9%. Richmond, Va.'s rental vacancy rate of 23.7% is the worst in America, while Orlando's 7.4% rate is lousiest on the homeowner side. Detroit and Las Vegas are among the worst offenders by both measures--the Motor City sports vacancy rates of 19.9% for rentals and 4% for homes; Sin City has rates of 16% and 4.7%, respectively.

"It's a mess," says Vegas developer Laurence Hallier. "Right now, things are just frozen. Everybody's scared."


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Not exactly shocked about Vegas. What was shocking was you could go and come back in almost 6 months and there was something new built up just like that. I haven't been in 2 years so I can only imagine.

Atlanta was pretty bad off according to one article on this report. Does anyone know where you can find historical archives of similar information?

One of the factors that was high in Atlanta was rental vacancies, and I think those were pretty high even before the real estate bubble burst since anyone who could possible qualify for a mortgage did.

Sure, foreclosures and the associated empty properties are surely up, but I actually think rental market might actually be better than it was say two or three years ago.

that's because everyone was migrating from NY to the ATL back in the 90s and coming back in the 2000s...I know so many of them....LOL

The "house" always wins... Vegas waited on man's greed and mammoth structures to coerce people in living there. But, the livelihood is harsh because it's >115 F in the summer and colder than normal in the winter... Besides all of LA would jump over to Vegas until they offered some fantastical life that they could not back up over time. Many of the 2nd strikers from California would move to Vegas that does not have 3 strikes rules... Lastly, Nevada corporations were formed, who barely had to pay any state taxes, but be based somewhere else...So Vegas does not shock me...

Detroit and Atlanta, those do cause my eyebrows to raise, because for Detroit, when did they ever get out of their doldrums... And Atlanta, it's problems were predictable. It was not a matter of if, but when, unfortunately... They growth superseded their capacity to maintain a city...

But, hey, Los Angeles might be next--who knows these days... Hayle, San Diego might be next...

since i live here, i am not surprised. you wanna know why? because the apartments that are here are either a.) cheap and poorly maintained, or b.) expensive and poorly maintained. they will turn you down for the slightest blotch on your credit reports. they will cheat you out of rent....the list goes on and on.

oh, and the rental houses? poorly maintained, and if they are well kept, too damn expensive to rent. 1500 for a three bedroom, one bathroom rancher? most people end up renting thru section 8, and i refuse to get started on that...

im at home with my mama, not because i want to be, but because i cant move somewhere that the rent is affordable but my kids might get shot at the bus stop.

I was in Vegas two years ago and it the population was exploding! I thought it was still growing....

While the city of Detroit proper has been losing population consistently for quite some time, that has not been true of the metropolitan area. The metropolitan area was continuing to grow until the housing bust, about 2 years ago. This article specifically referred to the "metropolitan area". True, people were leaving the city itself, but they were populating the suburbs. The number of abandoned homes in the suburbs is shocking.

Is it all the suburbs, or primarily the working class/middle class suburbs? At least here, it's the marginal suburbs that are feeling the impact of foreclosures and short sales. Home prices are a little lower in the wealthy suburbs, but the homes are still selling. Is that true for Detroit, or are homes being abandoned all over the place?

They are being abandoned all over the place. There are mansions in wealthy areas in foreclosure just as there are in working class neighborhoods. And, it's about to get worse with the stuff that happened with Chrysler this week.

Detroit's problems are deeper than Chrysler and GM. Any city with a 24% high school graduation rate is a slum.

Also, Detroit doesn't know how to take care of anything nice it gets. If a city doesn't even look good, no one will even want to consider it.

Still, everyone's hurting. It took us a year to rent out (rent to own) our house just 2 miles outside of Detroit and then the people who moved in wouldn't pay the rent and now the house is abandoned again (and has been for about 2 years). It's kind of painful driving by my old house now..

And when I was driving through Kansas over the weekend, I saw a completely abandoned city.. it looked like it had only been abandoned a few years ago, though. It was terribly creepy.