Bellingham Politics and Economics: Rental Vacancy Rates across America

Sample data selection from 2015 - 2019(Q3 only) from the Census 2019 Housing Vacancies and Home Ownership . Click to enlarge.

Q3 Census data for 2019 Housing Vacancies and Home Ownership is now available. The following charts and graphs are rental vacancy information. Some researchers have come to believe that so called "ghost ownership" and high rental vacancy rates have created an artificial lack of housing supply (1). Others believe there isn't enough home construction (2). I sought to look at the latest data for rental vacancies (up to Q3 2019) from the Census:

The table below gives Total Rented (43.2M) and Total Rentals Vacant (3.1M) across different regions of the U.S. for Q3 2019. I am using these two Census categories from the most recent housing data:

8 RNTOCC Renter Occupied Housing Units K
12 RENT Vacant Housing Units for Rent K

For the VacancyRate I am using ('adhoc') : TotalVacant/(TotalRented+TotalVacant):

GEO Region TotalRented TotalVacant VancancyRate

1: US 1 43243000 3183000 6.9

2: NE 2 8285000 477000 5.4

3: MW 3 8472000 646000 7.1

4: SO 4 15658000 1512000 8.8

5: WE 5 10827000 548000 4.8

Historically, rental vacancy rates appear to be increasing across the top MSAs ('Metropolitan Statistical Areas') of the prosperous West Coast in the most recent two of the last five years. San Francisco appears to the somewhat of an exception. I am using this Census spreadsheet: tab4_msa_15_19_rvr for rental vacancy rates from the top 75 metro areas ('MSA') for the charts below. Click on the charts to enlarge: