Census: 530 more vacant houses
Published 10:59 am Thursday, May 12, 2011
While Mower County’s population has increased by 560 since the 2000 census, its number of vacant houses has increased by 530 — leaving some wondering how these upticks relate.
Duane Sauke, owner of Austin’s Re/Max, said although the numbers imply real estate troubles, there is little need for concern.
“At any given time, in good times and bad times, there are always a number of homes that are vacant,” Sauke said. “One could very easily say, and be fair in saying, that the number of 500 vacant houses sounds like a big number, but … that number may not necessarily be that big when you’re talking about a county that has more than 15,000 homes.”
According to new census information released today, not only has the number of empty houses increased in the past decade, so has the number of total housing units. For some, this is a conundrum. But for Sauke, it represents a snapshot of buyer-seller behavior at a specific period of time.
Sauke said the real estate market grew from 2003 to 2005. Things didn’t get shaky until 2006, he said.
“The vacants out there right now would be because the home dwellers and buyers are probably not growing at the same rate as what the new construction added,” he said. “We noticed that when people bought a house and moved into it, some were buying without having sold their other house. It was the first indication, in 2006, that we saw problems coming.”
The empty homes throughout Mower County likely constitute a combination of foreclosures that have not sold, and people who have bought new homes but have not sold their previous homes, according to Sauke.
“Five-hundred is probably not a critical or extremely negative number for the size of the county,” he said.
Craig Hoium, director of community development in Austin, said he’s not surprised by the increase in homes, as Austin built an average of 40 single-family houses a year before the recession hit. Hoium said a portion of the vacancies could be due to foreclosures as well.
Sauke also said the census provides only a “snapshot in time” and would have more accurate data if it was collected over a five-year period, rather than one year. The snapshot could be misrepresentative because the real estate market changes from month to month, so vacant housing data could change by up to a couple hundred units depending on the season in which the sample was taken, Sauke said.
Sauke said the most important thing is to not get concerned over a handful of homes in a slew of thousands.
“There are always some vacant homes, even in the most normal real estate market that exists,” he said.
Jim Hurm, director of the Austin Housing Redevelopment Authority, wasn’t available for comment.