Vacant Properties
Vacant Properties

Vacant Properties Resources

Determine your Vacant Property Issues

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Locating vacant and deteriorated properties

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National data

There are two main national sources of data on property vacancy: United States Postal Service and Census Bureau.

United States Postal Service

The United States Postal Service (USPS) routinely gathers information for mail delivery purposes about which addresses have been vacant for more than 90 days, and which addresses are what they call “no-stat,” meaning “addresses for businesses or homes under construction and not yet occupied, or addresses in urban areas identified by a carrier as not likely to be active for some time.” Thus, a building that is a vacant shell should be classified as no-stat. It includes information on business and residential addresses separately, and how long they have been vacant; (e.g. 90-180 days, 180-360 days, over 1 year). Under an agreement between the USPS and HUD, this data is made available on a quarterly basis without charge to approved users, who must be affiliated with government agencies or nonprofit organizations. To submit your organization for approval as a user, go to http://www.huduser.org/portal/usps/index.html.

While the USPS data can be valuable in tracking neighborhood change, and is one of the very few datasets available as often as quarterly, it must be used carefully. While the tabulation of “no-stat” addresses would appear on its face to be a good proxy for abandoned properties, users have found many inconsistencies in that data. These tend to be principally of two kinds: differences between practices from one post office to the next that lead to inconsistency in labeling properties “no stat” or vacant, and changes in the data gathering procedures, particularly in 2010, that make it difficult to use the data to track longer-term trends.

Users of USPS data should be on the lookout for inconsistencies, and check the data against field observation before relying on it. In addition to providing free data for small areas through the HUD User website, the Postal Service also licenses its data to commercial firms that sell address-level or point source data about vacant addresses.

Census Bureau

Most people are familiar with the Census Bureau’s decennial census. The decennial census contains information about housing unit vacancy; it does not gather information about the vacancy status of other property types. The decennial census can be helpful to examine vacancy trends over long periods of time.

To gather a more recent picture of residential unit vacancy, communities can use American Community Survey data. In 2005, the Census Bureau began surveying a smaller pool of individuals on an annual basis. While ACS data is released annually, because its data is based off a small pool of information, it can be unreliable when looking at small geographies. For this reason, each year the Census Bureau “pools together” data from five consecutive years to create five-year ACS estimates for small areas.

The ACS five-year estimates can be more reliable than the one-year estimates, but the margin of error can still be large. This is not to say ACS data should not be used, simply that users should be aware of its limitations.

The decennial census and ACS both have some, albeit very limited, information on housing conditions. They aggregate information on households with one or more of the following conditions: 1) lacking complete plumbing facilities, 2) lacking complete kitchen facilities, 3) with 1.01 or more occupants per room, 4) selected monthly owner costs as a percentage of household income greater than 30 percent, and 5) gross rent as a percentage of household income greater than 30 percent. Since both physical and financial conditions are aggregated together, it is not a perfect data source on condition issues. Users are able to disaggregate the data to look at individual condition issues via the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data, however, the most granular geography is for regions of a city. That constraint combined with the ACS margin of error, make the data helpful only to get a general sense of city-wide conditions, rather than neighborhood-level conditions.

To access decennial census or ACS data, visit https://data.census.gov/. There are also a number of commercial data providers that aggregate census and other data sources via interactive mapping tools, such as PolicyMap which can make data collection and analysis of several data layers more efficient for entitles without in-house GIS capacity.

USPS and ACS data can be a helpful starting point for any community trying to get a sense of 1) where vacant properties are located, and 2) how vacancy has trended over time. However, both have significant limitations (e.g., lag time, do not look at all property types, limited condition information). For this reason, for any community that is serious about developing a vacant property strategy, they must supplement these sources with local data.

Local Data

Local data will almost always be the preferable source of information on property vacancy and condition due to its timeliness and granularity. It is possible that a vacant property dataset, or components of one, already exists in your community. Common data sources include:

  • Utilities (water, gas, electricity): Utility departments or companies can report on properties with no or extremely low utility usage as a proxy for vacancy.
  • Assessor: The Assessors’ office will likely have data on vacant lots, that is parcels without improvements.
  • Fire Department: Many fire departments proactively survey vacant structures to determine if there is a likelihood of fire and whether or not the structure will be a danger to firefighters.

Vacant property and condition surveys

These data sources are great starting points; however, it is unlikely these sources will provide all of the information needed to develop a fully fleshed out vacant property strategy. For this reason, many communities conduct a windshield survey of all parcels to gather information on property vacancy and condition. In addition to providing timely, detailed information, these surveys also provide a baseline to evaluate progress towards achieving your vacant property strategy goals.

These surveys create really great benchmarks to monitor neighborhood trends and can help communities strategically address properties with the limited resources they may have. Here are some key things to consider, and resources, if your community intends to move ahead with a parcel conditions survey.

Minimally, the survey should:

  • Examine every parcel in a municipality
  • Collect data on whether or not a structure is present on the parcel
  • Collect basic data on the condition of structures (e.g., in good condition or needs to be demolished)
  • Be performed in a relatively condensed time period (i.e., matter of months)
  • Be performed on a semi-frequent basis (i.e., every few years)

Ideally, the survey also:

  • Collects photos of each parcel
  • Collects data on the condition of vacant land (e.g., dumping)
  • Collects data on specific condition issues (e.g., open point of entry, peeling paint, porch sagging, roof damage)

Surveys can be an excellent partnership opportunity and a way to get community buy in for a vacant property strategy from the start.

  • Residents and Community Based Organizations: They can serve as individual surveyors, though a community should think about how to compensate their time, or can provide feedback on the survey tool.
  • Departments or other governmental entities: If your department does not have GIS or technological capacity, another department or governmental entity at the local or regional level may. Other departments could also assist with data collection as they are out in the field.
  • Academic institutions: They can be a source of survey and analytical expertise, GIS capacity, and provide student assistance for survey development or execution. They also can be a good “home” for the survey and data since they are not subject to change over from election cycles, which can erode the longevity of the survey.
  • Data-centered nonprofits: Many communities have nonprofits dedicated to generating, gathering, and analyzing data which have led survey efforts and house survey data. One may be located in your region or state, which could be a helpful resource. See the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership for a list of these organizations.
  • Private sector: They can be a source of donated technological equipment or expertise, or a source of volunteers.

There are a multitude of ways a community can go about performing the survey. A pen and paper in the field is absolutely an option. Communities can also look at ways to leverage technology in the field, via smartphone survey applications, and out of the field, via use of google street view and artificial intelligence. Advances in technology have made these tools far more accessible to an average user and reduced their costs.

Below are a few common property survey applications. Some communities have also created their own applications for property surveys.

There is no one single “right” way to go about performing a vacant property and condition survey. A community of any size and with any budget can find a combination of options that will make a survey feasible.

Below are some examples of surveys as well as additional resources:

Understanding who owns the properties

Once a community determines where the vacant and deteriorated properties are located, it is imperative that they determine who owns the properties and how ownership has been trending.

Ownership, in combination with conditions and neighborhood market will determine which strategies will be effective. For example, using aggressive code enforcement ticketing in a weak-market area with low property values on deteriorated, mainly homeowner-occupied properties will not be effective. Those owners likely cannot get traditional bank financing to fund the home repair necessary to resolve their code issues since the cost to repair their property may outstrip their equity. In those areas, a strategy that pairs code compliance efforts with home repair grants or no interest loans would be more effective.

Getting the data

There are three important local sources of ownership information:

  1. Recorder/Register of Deeds office: They house the official records of property ownership.
  2. Asessor’s office: They house information on taxpayers. Depending on the locality, they may also have up-to-date information from the Recorder/Register of Deeds, which provides a single database of relevant ownership information.
  3. Tax Commissioner/Collector/Treasurer: The property tax foreclosing governmental unit, which is often at the county level, will house information on property tax delinquency, if a tax lien has been sold, and if a property is facing foreclosure.  

There are national commercial data providers that sell access to these local data sources. However, you may be able to get more real-time data directly from the source and at no cost.

Using the data

Once your community has access to parcel-level ownership and taxpayer information it will need to interpret what the data are showing related to current ownership and trends. Key questions include:

  • Which properties are owned by:
    • Public entities?
    • Individual homeowners?
    • Investors?
  • Which properties are facing property tax foreclosure?
  • Where are the different types of ownership concentrated?
  • How have the breakdowns of ownership been trending over time?

It is important to distinguish between properties that are owned by individuals and properties that are owned by corporations/investors because the carrots and sticks to motivate them will differ. Using Deeds and Assessor information, you can distinguish between individuals and investors. Some common flags include:

  • Name: If an owner or taxpayer name have terms like “LLC”, “Company,” “Corp.”, those are an indicator that it is owned by an investor, not individual.
  • Address: If the property’s address is different from the owner’s address, that can be a proxy for a rental property or for investor ownership. Address can also give an indication of whether or not the property is owned by a local, in-state, or out-of-state owner.
  • Property tax status: Many jurisdictions offer tax relief for owner occupants. The most common is a “homestead exemption” which decreases the millage rate for owner-occupants. That is a flag for an owner-occupied property.

It is also important for a community to look at tax delinquency of properties to determine if a property is tax delinquent and facing property tax foreclosure.

As it relates to vacant or deteriorated residential properties, many communities have experienced an increase in the volume of investor-owned properties. It is important that a community understands what types of investors own properties in their communities since the tools used to motivate repair or reoccupancy will be different.

While many may think that every investor is bad and looking to make a quick buck, that line of thinking is not helpful when designing a vacant property strategy. Investors are not a monolith. Yes, investors are looking for a return on their investment (and any rational homeowner would too), but their investment goals and timeline for investment can widely differ. Responsible investors are a critical part of a revitalization strategy. They are able to help stabilize and rehabilitate a greater scale of properties than individual homeowners and offer a critical source of rental housing since not every household has the desire or ability to jump into homeownership.

Looking at where investors are purchasing properties, what types of properties they are purchasing, and at what volumes can give you an indication of their investment motivations.

Vacant or Deteriorated Housing Investor Typology Table 

Rehabbers and holders gravitate toward areas where market prices for distressed properties, while low enough to enable the investment to be profitable, are still high enough to discourage scavengers. In order for a rehabber to make a profit, the market price of a well fixed-up house in the area must be greater than the sum of their acquisition and rehab costs.

The same is true of holders. For an investor to justify holding and maintaining a property on a long-term basis while realizing at least some cash flow, they must realistically expect that the property will have a decent likelihood of appreciating within a reasonable time frame. While some investors buy to hold indefinitely in order to build a long-term portfolio, most holders have an exit strategy that assumes the property will be sold, typically within five to eight years.

Conditions in lower-value markets such as in cities like Detroit or Toledo are very different. Long-term appreciation in these markets is seen as less likely because the prices of distressed properties are too low. From a pure investment standpoint, as a result, there is less economic justification for pursuing a long-term holding strategy. Properties in these areas are more likely to attract milkers, who spend little on maintenance, ignore property tax bills and are able to recoup their investment in short order. After making a quick profit, they are likely to walk away from the property after two or three years.  Since they are offering a low-quality product and have no interest in long-term preservation of value, milkers have no motivation to be selective with respect to their tenants, unlike holders, for whom preservation of value is as important as cash flow.  While there are investors pursuing responsible long-term holding strategies in these cities, they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. 

In order to mount the most effective strategy to maximize benefits and minimize harm from distressed property investors’ activities in a community, those responsible for designing the strategy need to understand both the investors’ motivation, and the realities of housing market conditions in their communities, not only in the community as a whole, but in individual neighborhood sub-markets, where conditions may vary widely from one to the next.