Looking at vacancy rates in the single family housing market is one indication on how things are going.  I did a blog back in October 2008 with the vacancy rates and I decided to compare them to what's happening right now.  Overall the results are encouraging, most cities had a decrease in the number of homes vacant.

I pulled the active listings excluding new construction and then counted the number of homes that were vacant to come up with a vacancy rate.  Then I  compared this to a similar calculation I did back in October to see how they compared.

Of the 13 cities I tracked only three showed a higher vacancy rate than they had in October of last year.  While 9 of the cities showed a decrease in the number of single family homes in the MLS that are vacant.  That is a positive sign as vacancies mean generally one of two things, either the homeowner is having trouble selling and is likely paying two mortgages OR the home has gone into foreclosure.  Seeing this number on the decline is encouraging. 

Del Valle showed the most dramatic increase in the number of vacancies and most of the increase was due to an increase in foreclosures.  You can see that over 50% of the homes for sale in Del Valle are vacant.  This is not good news for sellers but if you are a buyer interested in the Del Valle area there are definitely some deals to be made. 

Hopefully as we enter the 'selling season' that is spring and summer, we'll start seeing some major improvement in these numbers next time I pull the data.