America faces a housing shortage, yet about 14.5 million homes across the country are vacant. How can both be true?
Using the latest U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by LendingTree, Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld created this map showing the share of vacant housing units in every state.
The figures include vacation homes, rentals awaiting tenants, homes for sale, and other unoccupied properties, not just abandoned buildings.
Which States Have the Highest Vacancy Rates?About one in 10 U.S. housing units is vacant, but most are not permanently sitting unused.
Nearly 4.7 million vacant units are seasonal or recreational homes, 2.6 million are available for rent, and fewer than 800,000 are actively listed for sale. This helps explain why states with large vacation-home markets, including Maine, Vermont, Florida, and Hawaii, record some of the nation’s highest vacancy rates.
Rank State Vacancy Rate 2024 Vacant Housing Units 1 Maine 20.6% 154,717 2 Vermont 19.4% 65,626 3 Alaska 17.6% 57,958 4 West Virginia 15.4% 132,670 5 Florida 14.7% 1,503,660 6 Mississippi 14.6% 195,683 7 Alabama 14.5% 340,018 8 Louisiana 14.4% 304,122 9 New Hampshire 14.3% 92,650 10 Arkansas 13.5% 188,686 11 Delaware 13.4% 62,165 12 Hawaii 13.3% 75,443 13 South Carolina 13.3% 325,050 14 Montana 13.2% 69,560 15 New Mexico 12.5% 119,550 16 North Carolina 12.5% 613,323 17 North Dakota 12.3% 46,218 18 Wyoming 12.2% 33,823 19 Oklahoma 12.0% 212,738 20 Michigan 11.8% 545,867 21 Missouri 11.2% 317,060 22 Wisconsin 10.8% 299,092 23 Arizona 10.5% 336,758 24 South Dakota 10.5% 43,040 25 Georgia 10.3% 467,469 26 Idaho 10.3% 82,009 27 Kentucky 10.3% 208,647 28 Tennessee 10.2% 319,393 29 District of Columbia 10.1% 36,523 30 New York 10.0% 862,595 31 Texas 9.4% 1,135,699 32 Minnesota 9.3% 237,075 33 Nevada 9.3% 123,878 34 Kansas 9.2% 119,575 35 Pennsylvania 9.2% 531,599 36 Rhode Island 9.1% 44,362 37 Indiana 8.8% 260,559 38 Virginia 8.7% 319,024 39 Iowa 8.5% 121,992 40 Colorado 8.3% 214,835 41 Massachusetts 8.1% 245,364 42 Ohio 8.1% 429,200 43 Utah 8.1% 98,646 44 Illinois 7.7% 421,003 45 Maryland 7.7% 197,856 46 Nebraska 7.6% 65,597 47 California 7.5% 1,096,644 48 New Jersey 7.5% 283,653 49 Oregon 7.5% 139,570 50 Washington 7.3% 241,800 51 Connecticut 7.0% 107,815 -- 🇺🇸 U.S. total 10.1% 14,547,859Maine leads the country with a vacancy rate of 20.6%, followed by Vermont at 19.4% and Alaska at 17.6%. At the other end of the ranking, Washington and Connecticut have rates of around 7%, while California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also sit near the bottom.
In these states, available housing is often absorbed quickly, leaving fewer homes unoccupied. A low vacancy rate can therefore reflect strong demand, not necessarily a healthier or more affordable housing market.
Why Empty Homes Won’t Solve the Housing CrisisAt first glance, millions of vacant homes may appear sufficient to ease America’s housing shortage. In practice, many are not available to year-round buyers or renters.
Some are second homes or seasonal properties concentrated in vacation destinations, while others are temporarily vacant between tenants or owners. High vacancy rates and housing shortages can therefore exist at the same time, particularly in expensive metropolitan areas where year-round housing remains scarce.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the salary needed to afford rent across America.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/06/2026 - 19:40Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Voter files in Maricopa County, Arizona, were obtained illegally before the 2020 presidential election, according to records released on Aug. 6 by the White House.
Authorities discovered that 633,000 voter files had been exfiltrated from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office just before the election, according to logs from the U.S. intelligence community and other documents.
The voter files contained information such as people’s names, birth dates, and addresses.
About 930 of them included information on people such as domestic violence victims, judges, and law enforcement officers.
The files were illegally extracted from the office, the FBI said in a document opening an investigation.
The bureau identified a suspect, who admitted to the crime, according to a document summarizing an interview agents conducted with the man.
The man, who has not been publicly named, used to work for a city whose name was redacted in the FBI file.
He went on to work for himself, fixing computers and removing viruses from machines.
In 2020, he discovered a vulnerability on the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office website while registering to vote.
The man developed a program to obtain voter files from the website and ended up extracting between 1 million and 2 million files to his personal hard drives and an online account, he told investigators.
The man said he did not intend to sell the information.
After he “realized the gravity of the situation,” he “became scared” and knew he would be visited by law enforcement, according to the interview summary.
The man told officials that he destroyed the files shortly before the FBI raided his house in Fountain Hills in November 2020.
The man said he regretted what he did and knew he had to deal with consequences for his actions.
The FBI “spent significant resources solving this cybercrime,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement, but prosecutors in Arizona declined to prosecute the man. He has never been charged.
There’s no evidence that any votes were changed in association with the incident, John Solomon, chairman of the White House Government Transparency Task Force, told reporters on a call.
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tyler Durden Thu, 08/06/2026 - 19:15