Dear map makers who show us by-state break-downs: normalize by the population. The first map tells me this: New York, Florida, and Texas have large populations.
I knew numerous people that have a vacation home in Florida due to their parents retiring there and then passing away. They decide to hold onto the house/condo as an investment rather than using it in any way. Given how many people were retiring to Florida, I wonder how many vacation homes there are due to this rather than being the preferred purchasing location for younger generations.
If you are have an objective squint, a lot of vacation homes have wheels. Per Google AI just prior to pasting:
As of 2024, there are an estimated 11.2 million RV-owning households in the U.S., according to Emergency Assistance Plus.
That's more than double the 4.8 million mentioned in the article...and theoretically some households could own more than two. But modulo RV's are also used for work travel particularly when it comes to construction.
Like anything relating to housing and real-estate, it's complicated.
This is interesting, but one axis it's missing is that in some places the "vacation homes" aren't actually habitable year round. Quite a few cabins in Maine are neither insulated nor heated for the winters, are only accessible via roads that aren't maintained during the winter, etc. I'm not familiar with the area but I would guess that Minnesota's Lake Country and other similar places have the same thing going on.
I suspect the "vacation" homes on Manhattan are really mostly empty luxury units for foreign rich people to park money in the US. "Billionaires Row" near Central Park is half empty for just this reason.
The article cites the availability of air conditioning as a major factor in vacation home trends. Prior to AC, escaping heat was the main purpose to have a vacation home. That’s why so many vacation homes are near old major cities like Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. In the summer, families with money escaped to the mountains or the beach, where it was much more pleasant during the hot months.
I would guess that another huge factor has been the decline in the real cost of air travel. It’s now cheap enough that people with money can reasonably expect to fly somewhere for every vacation they want to take. You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.
In fact, I feel buying property in one vacation spot is starting to look more like an anchor than an escape hatch. Keeping capital in securities instead is more liquid and less expensive (stocks don’t have roofs or plumbing). Let someone else own the hotel or AirBnB or VRBO. I’ll fly in and rent it just for the vacation. This mindset may partially explain why vacation home ownership has not “kept up” with the growth in real wealth.
High property taxes and insurance costs are another factor that's changed the equation. I'm not sure how profitable it is to operate a second home as a business anymore, unless it's very special and very well marketed. If anything it feels like a personal luxury.
I'd guess the ones in Alaska are rentals
for seasonal workers. I understand there are tourist areas that are largely unpopulated in the winter and populated mostly by seasonal workers in the summer (some of whom work in Hawaii the other half of the year).
There are a number of retired people that bounce between Michigan and Florida (or Arizona) depending on the season. You might say they have 2 vacation homes :-)
The most interesting part of this is the map of census tracts that shows how most vacation homes are tightly grouped.
For example, Florida has a lot of vacation homes (8% of the state's housing vs 3% nationwide), but the vast majority of Florida census tracts have a tiny proportion and vacation homes are the majority in a few small areas. In some areas, the proportion of vacation homes seems to follow population density (gulf coast of Florida), and in other areas it follows the _inverse_ of population density (northern Maine.)
What I think would be really interesting is a map of distance to primary home by census tract. Obviously Florida vacation homeowners are mostly from far away and in New England they live closer, but what about all the other areas?
Too bad there no adjustment for price. Many of those “vacation homes” in the north are a few acres of wilderness and improvements worth a few thousand max.
Zoning, as the author points to, is not the issue around those parts.
It's not clear to me from this article or from the census page whether this definition of vacation homes includes residential units rented out via AirBnB or the like. But the numbers seem to suggest it doesn't, since some data ( https://insideairbnb.com/los-angeles/ ) says that, for instance, Los Angeles has 45k AirBnB listings while the article claims only 14k vacation homes in LA.
All of the data about vacation homes grossly underestimates the vacancy rate because of the US primary residence deduction. There's a higher rate of vacancies even in non-vacation areas, and in vacation areas extremely high rates 75% or more for certain neighborhoods
Most likely investors are setting up phony identities and marking the homes as occupied to claim deductions
As with any stats-laden post, I wanted to understand what exactly a “vacation house” was. A footnote in the article references a “census of housing” and I found information on the US Census website. There are 6 main categories for vacant houses (vacation/seasonal is one of them), and at least some of them have subcategories.
It is pretty likely that “vacation house” doesn’t include a lot of housing that most people would think of when they think about vacation houses. If something is listed on AirBnb or VRBO, for example, it is almost certainly not included in these stats.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 53.6 ms ] threadAs of 2024, there are an estimated 11.2 million RV-owning households in the U.S., according to Emergency Assistance Plus.
That's more than double the 4.8 million mentioned in the article...and theoretically some households could own more than two. But modulo RV's are also used for work travel particularly when it comes to construction.
Like anything relating to housing and real-estate, it's complicated.
I would guess that another huge factor has been the decline in the real cost of air travel. It’s now cheap enough that people with money can reasonably expect to fly somewhere for every vacation they want to take. You don’t need a condo near the local ski resort if you can fly to a different one every winter.
In fact, I feel buying property in one vacation spot is starting to look more like an anchor than an escape hatch. Keeping capital in securities instead is more liquid and less expensive (stocks don’t have roofs or plumbing). Let someone else own the hotel or AirBnB or VRBO. I’ll fly in and rent it just for the vacation. This mindset may partially explain why vacation home ownership has not “kept up” with the growth in real wealth.
Then figure out a way to get out of income tax.
For example, Florida has a lot of vacation homes (8% of the state's housing vs 3% nationwide), but the vast majority of Florida census tracts have a tiny proportion and vacation homes are the majority in a few small areas. In some areas, the proportion of vacation homes seems to follow population density (gulf coast of Florida), and in other areas it follows the _inverse_ of population density (northern Maine.)
What I think would be really interesting is a map of distance to primary home by census tract. Obviously Florida vacation homeowners are mostly from far away and in New England they live closer, but what about all the other areas?
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/90239274/infographic-did-faceboo...
Zoning, as the author points to, is not the issue around those parts.
Most likely investors are setting up phony identities and marking the homes as occupied to claim deductions
It is pretty likely that “vacation house” doesn’t include a lot of housing that most people would think of when they think about vacation houses. If something is listed on AirBnb or VRBO, for example, it is almost certainly not included in these stats.