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American Ghost Towns Of The 21st Century
24/7 Wall Street ^ | March 27, 2011 | Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on 04/02/2011 2:11:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

There are several counties in America, each with more than 10,000 homes, which have vacancy rates above 55%. The rate is above 60% in several.

Most people who follow unemployment and the housing crisis would expect high vacancy rates in hard-hit states including Nevada, Florida and Arizona. They were among the fastest growing areas from 2000 to 2010. Disaster struck once economic growth ended.

Palm Coast, Florida, Las Vegas, Nevada and Cape Coral, Florida were all among the former high fliers. Many large counties which have 20% or higher occupancy rates are in these same regions. Lee County, Florida, Yuma County, Arizona, Mohave County, Arizona, and Osceola, Florida each had a precipitous drop in home prices and increases in vacancy rates as homebuyers disappeared when the economy went south.

1. Lake County, Michigan

Number of Homes: 14,966 Vacancy Rate: 66% Population: 11,014

Lake County is located in central Michigan, a few hour’s drive from the industrial cities of Flint, Pontiac and Detroit. It is in the heart of the state’s fishing district and has been a vacation destination since the early years of the car industry. Many of those second home owners are now gone. This has helped drive nearly 20% of the residents below the poverty level and the median household income to under $27,000 a year.

2. Vilas County, Wisconsin

Number of homes: 25,116 Vacancy Rate: 62% Population: 21,919

Vilas County is located at the uppermost part of Wisconsin, near the border of the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. The county is plagued by two things. The first is that it has been a tourist area for Wisconsin residents. The second is that a significant part of the county’s economy depends on the logging, forestry and construction industries, each of which struggled during the recession.

3. Summit County, Colorado

Number of homes: 29,842 Vacancy rate: 61% Population: 26,843

Summit County sits northwest of the Pike National Forest and due west of Denver. The area is near to several major ski resorts. The local paper reports on revenue “The decrease isn’t linked to the dramatic dip in assessed property values in Summit County, expected to be near 20 percent lower than in the previous valuation period. Those changes will show up in property tax bills starting in 2011.”

4. Worcester County, Maryland

Number of homes: 55,749 Vacancy rate: 60% Population: 49,274

The Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation recently estimated that the county would have a sharp drop in its tax base in fiscal year 2012 and “another, more drastic, revenue decrease” for the fiscal year that follows. The twin engines of county’s economy are tourism and agriculture. Experts believe the tourism business in Maryland’s Eastern Shore could stay crippled for years.

5. Mono County, California

Number of homes: 13,912 Vacancy rate: 59% Population: 12,774

Mono County sits near the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite National Parks. Ironically, Bodie, the official state gold rush ghost town, is in Mono County. Finance Director Brian Muir recently said he expected another property drop in property tax receipts. Like most of the other counties on this list, tourism is a major source of revenue for its economy.

6. Dare County North Carolina

Number of homes: 33,492 Vacancy Rate: 57% Population: 95,828

Dare County includes the northern-most parts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The situation in the vacation area is so severe that the “Outer Banks Voice” recently wrote, “If Dare County Manager Bobby Outten was intending to sound an alarm by suggesting that the EMS helicopter and school nurses were expendable in the next budget, he probably succeeded.” His comments are unlikely to be terribly different from those of other executives of counties on the list. Vacant homes and homes which lose double-digit amounts of their value each year irreparably undermine the tax base. And, as services fall, fewer potential homeowners will consider investing in the area.

7. Dukes County, Massachusetts

Number of homes: 17,188 Vacancy Rate: 57% Population: 15,527

Dukes County encompasses the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The enemy of the local budget is, as is true for most of the counties on this list, falling property values. Vacationers still flock to the resort island in the summer as do seasonal workers. The county is close to deserted when the weather turns cold.

8. Sawyer County, Wisconsin

Number of homes: 15,975 Vacancy Rate: 56% Population: 17,117

The Sawyer County website has a link, prominently placed on the homepage, which goes to a list of foreclosed homes for sales by the sheriff’s department. There are not many new homebuyers. The number of people who live in the county was flat from 2000 to 2010. The Hayward Community School District, located in Sawyer, will probably close one of its elementary schools. Sawyer is a fishing and biking destination, and has suffered from a drop in travelers from the southern part of the state.

9. Burnett County, Wisconsin

Number of homes: 15,278 Vacancy Rate: 55% Population: 16,196

Burnett County is at the western most part of Wisconsin near Minneapolis. The county’s population fell from 2000 to 2010. County Administrator Candace Fitzgerald recently said that proposed budget cuts “could prove to be devastating and very hard to recover from.” The county’s attractiveness as a tourist destination has faltered. Home values have fallen for three consecutive years. Cuts in the Wisconsin State budget will lower state aid. People are more likely to default and abandon vacation homes than their primary residences. This has probably been an important reason vacancy rates in rural tourist areas in Wisconsin are so high.

10. Aitkin County, Minnesota

Number of homes: 16,029 Vacancy rate: 54% Population: 15,736

Aitkin County offers visitors two seasons for recreation. The first is in the summer when fishing is popular. The second is winter when snowmobilers come north. Aitkin is the last of the counties on the 24/7 Wall St. list demonstrating that rural regions which rely on tourists are especially exposed to economic hardship in a recession. They may take longer to recover than some industrialized cities do.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: economy; recession; taxes; unemployment
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Obama administration: "Right on schedule."
1 posted on 04/02/2011 2:11:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I’m not sure what the point is of the article. Looks like each of the 10 “ghost towns” is a vacation/tourist area that has always had an off-season. These are “ghost towns” off-season in any event. I gather the point is that people are unloading their vacation/second homes and therefore there is a huge inventory of vacant homes in these areas.

These areas pale next to places like Las Vegas and others that have immense “ghost towns” of incomplete new developments that were meant to be the owners primary residences.


2 posted on 04/02/2011 2:23:11 PM PDT by rockvillem
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Mono County sits near the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite National Parks. Ironically, Bodie, the official state gold rush ghost town, is in Mono County.

Actually Mono County sits right in the middle of the Sierra Nevada with 14,000' peaks.

3 posted on 04/02/2011 2:23:22 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono (My greatest fear is that when I'm gone my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
 
 
 
Interesting that three out of those ten are in Wisconsin.
 
 
 

4 posted on 04/02/2011 2:23:54 PM PDT by lapsus calami (What's that stink? Code Pink ! ! And their buddy Murtha, too!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
logging, forestry and construction industries, each of which struggled during the recession.

Two of the three killed off by lefty green jihad

5 posted on 04/02/2011 2:28:46 PM PDT by hattend (Obama got his 3am call about Egypt. The call went right to the answering machine.- Sarah Palin)
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To: lapsus calami; All
Interesting that three out of those ten are in Wisconsin.

I have family connections in Sawyer County, Wisconsin. Most of the empty homes are summer homes that were built by people from Minneapolis. People said they were crazy to build million dollar homes where the economy could not support them. The local real estate market has gone down, but hasn't hit bottom yet. You might find a good deal if you are retired or have another independent means of support. Notice how there are nearly as many homes as residents? That is a pretty good clue that most of the empty homes are vacation homes.

6 posted on 04/02/2011 2:30:53 PM PDT by marktwain
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

What a strange article. It uses census data to claim that houses are vacant. Well, most of those houses may be second homes, and we don’t want people to be counted twice. If they are seasonal rental properties, again they would most likely not have a tenant on April 1, 2010.

For example, Worcester County, Md includes Ocean City, a hugely popular summer resort. So 49000+ people show up in 19000+ households on the census, in a county that has 55000 housing units. Almost all of the “empty” housing units are fully occupied in the summer by people who live elsewhere.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/24/24047.html


7 posted on 04/02/2011 2:31:00 PM PDT by maica ( It is better to trust in the LORD Than to put confidence in man.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
I'd like to know the breakdown of those remaining, that are employed by government, on welfare, or belong to unions.

Friggin leeches.

8 posted on 04/02/2011 2:34:31 PM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal The 16th Amendment!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Those unions are killing Wisconsin.


9 posted on 04/02/2011 2:42:01 PM PDT by Tzimisce (Never forget that the American Revolution began when the British tried to disarm the colonists.)
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To: marktwain
 
 
 
Thanx for that bit of inside info.
 
 
 

10 posted on 04/02/2011 2:43:22 PM PDT by lapsus calami (What's that stink? Code Pink ! ! And their buddy Murtha, too!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
From this list, it looks like Fleebag senators are not the only folks leaving the Soviet Socialist State of Wisconsin....
11 posted on 04/02/2011 2:53:57 PM PDT by April Lexington (Study the Constitution so you know what they are taking away!)
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To: rockvillem

Yes. I don’t know what the point of the article is either.

Martha’s VIneyard (Dukes County-MA) has always been like that - the running joke for decades is that the island raises up a foot when the tourists leave.

Every town on the island shuts down at 5pm there and off season when I was young the most fun you’d get as a kid was watching the A&P truck unload at the store - now that was exciting!


12 posted on 04/02/2011 2:54:18 PM PDT by libertarian27 (Ingsoc: Department of Life, Department of Liberty, Department of Happiness)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

There are something like 4 counties in Michigan with less than 10,000 people. According to the recent census results they were among the counties with growing populations. Keweenaw county has less than 2500 people.

Frankly, the sparsely populated upper peninsula is my kind of place. Incidentally the Bing background photo today is from the UP.


13 posted on 04/02/2011 2:56:31 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: cripplecreek

I was wrong. It was 9 counties with less than 10,000 in them.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110322/NEWS06/110322061/Interactive-map-See-Michigan-s-2010-census-results


14 posted on 04/02/2011 3:05:49 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin! (look it up))
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To: marktwain
We have been going to June Lake for 30 years, lots of cabins there and a lot more at Mammoth Mountain a bit south of there, almost all owned by LA area people who use June or Mammoth for skiing and or fishing.


15 posted on 04/02/2011 3:11:52 PM PDT by Michael.SF. (Going to Charlotte for the barbecue is like going to Minneapolis for the gumbo - John Reed)
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To: rockvillem
I expected to see Las Vegas on the list.

As for the point of the article ... I kind of appreciate that it wasn't trying to make one. As far as I'm concerned, it was just giving me interesting information to compute. If there was a point, it was that property tax receipts for the counties were taking a drop because the tax is based on the value of the property, and as the property value drops, so does county funding, and so county-run things are closing, etc. I say -- fine with me. People can be self-sufficient in most of the areas the county government gets into, anyway, with the exception of law enforcement.

Real estate prices are fascinating things. I noted that all those presumably scenically lovely places had seasons, times of year when it's not a place for pleasantness. Second homes in tourist areas that are temperate year-round ... I don't see any on that list, including Florida, where humid summers are plain gruelling.

16 posted on 04/02/2011 3:14:27 PM PDT by Finny ("Raise hell. Vote smart." -- Ted Nugent)
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To: Finny

The inland portion of Dare County, NC would qualify. The islands are breezy and cooler than the southeastern coastal summer norm, though. The Labrador Current is cold. It clashes with the bathwater of the Gulf Stream at Cape Hatteras, which is in Dare County.


17 posted on 04/02/2011 3:20:11 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: maica

Yup, the census counts seasonal second homes as vacant. Maine has a lot of those. According to the Census, 22% of all the homes in Maine are vacant. They’re vacation homes, they’re not vacation homes for sale, or anything like that. Vacation homes. It’s completely useless except to tell us where the vacation homes are.


18 posted on 04/02/2011 3:22:11 PM PDT by truthfreedom
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To: rockvillem
I expected to see Las Vegas on the list.

As for the point of the article ... I kind of appreciate that it wasn't trying to make one. As far as I'm concerned, it was just giving me interesting information to compute. If there was a point, it was that property tax receipts for the counties were taking a drop because the tax is based on the value of the property, and as the property value drops, so does county funding, and so county-run things are closing, etc. I say -- fine with me. People can be self-sufficient in most of the areas the county government gets into, anyway, with the exception of law enforcement.

Real estate prices are fascinating things. I noted that all those presumably scenically lovely places with high vacancy rates had seasons, times of year when it's definitely not a place for pleasantness. Naturally those places have higher occupancy certain seasons than others, and we expect that, but they're also experiencing higher vacancies than average, presumably.

High vacancy rates in tourist areas that are temperate year-round ... I don't see any on that list; Florida doesn't qualify because its humid summers are plain gruelling. What's my point? Weather has a whole helluva lot to do with the "location, location, location" mantra of real estate. At least, that's how it looks to me.

19 posted on 04/02/2011 3:23:09 PM PDT by Finny ("Raise hell. Vote smart." -- Ted Nugent)
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To: RegulatorCountry
The Labrador Current is cold. It clashes with the bathwater of the Gulf Stream at Cape Hatteras,

Which is why we vacation farther south. Bill and Tom would love to go hang-gliding on the dunes at Kitty Hawk, but the little kids need to be able to go in the water, or we might as well stay home and clean the baseboards with toothbrushes.

20 posted on 04/02/2011 3:24:02 PM PDT by Tax-chick (Nadie me ama como Jesus.)
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