Homes for Sale vs Population Where They’re Located; Miami Leads the way with highest real estate to population ratio

February 24th, 2009 by roostblog in Real Estate

With all the gloom and doom about the real estate market swirling around these days, I thought it would be interesting to break down the real estate market a little differently.

By most estimates, people tend to stay in close proximity to where they live currently regardless of if they are a first-time home buyer or a move-up buyer.  So I thought it would be fascinating to compare the population of some of the major cities in the country to the amount of listings that are currently on the MLS.

Now I’m aware that some locations in the chart below have neighboring cities and towns that people might move to and from but I still found this little informal study interesting never the less.

City

Population Est.

Homes for sale 2/24/2009

% of Homes For Sale to Population
Chicago, IL

2,836,658

30,707

1.08%
Houston, TX

2,208,180

16,659

0.75%
Philadelphia, PA

1,449,634

11,571

0.80%
Phoenix, AZ

1,552,259

13,711

0.88%
San Diego, CA

1,266,731

5,325

0.42%
Dallas, TX

1,240,499

7,159

0.58%
San Jose, CA

939,899

4,455

0.47%
Detroit, MI

916,952

8,021

0.87%
San Francisco, CA

764,976

1,960

0.26%
Austin, TX

743,074

6,781

0.91%
Baltimore, MD

637,455

6,309

0.99%
Fort Worth, TX

681,818

4,547

0.67%
Seattle, WA

594,210

4,406

0.74%
Boston, MA

599,351

2,786

0.46%
Denver, CO

588,349

5,946

1.01%
Washington, DC

588,292

3,878

0.66%
Nashville, TN

590,807

4,657

0.79%
Las Vegas, NV

558,880

14,837

2.65%
Portland, OR

550,396

6,542

1.19%
Long Beach, CA

466,520

1,560

0.33%
Atlanta, GA

519,145

9,345

1.80%
Sacramento, CA

460,242

4,330

0.94%
Mesa, AZ

452,933

4,834

1.07%
Miami, FL

409,719

19,047

4.65%
Minneapolis, MN

377,392

3,094

0.82%
Arlington, TX

371,038

1,610

0.43%
(Note: Only cities represented completely on the Roost platform were used from the Top 50 largest US cities list. Population estimates are derived from the latest US Census survey executed on July 1, 2007.)

Some interesting takeaways from this information:

  • There are only two locations (Las Vegas and Miami) that have a home for sale to population ratio of more than 2.5%
  • There are only seven cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Mesa, Miami, Portland) that have that have a home for sale to population ratio of more than 1%
  • The average home for sale to population ratio from the cities above is only .91%

So to sum this up, we know there are a lot of homes on the market but we also need to remember that there are plenty of people to buy them too.

What do you think about it?

Comments Tagged in: ,

  • This is certainly an interesting way of looking at the market. Have you looked back historically at how those ratios change over time in relation to the market conditions?

    Jeremy B. Shapiro
    ForeclosuresMass.com
  • Jeremy, I think I'm going to take this data and refine it a bit more. I will also take your suggetions and try to look at this historically. Stay Tuned.
  • Rick Fisk
    This pretty much ignores how many people are eligible to buy the homes. It's not telling us much about the markets in those areas.
  • I know Rick. People can slice and dice the data in millions of ways. This does not take into consideration the affordability index for each city or the amount of the population that are already in homes. But I still thought it was interesting because the numbers were so low. All you here from the media is how much inventory is on the market and I was trying to say in relation, it's not as high as you would think.
  • VictorLund
    Great Post - Send it to Washington.

    What percentage of the 1% that are available for sale are are in foreclosure?

    Depending on who you ask, and where you look, I have seen numbers as high as 30% of homes for sale are in foreclosure.

    Our government is about to spend an awful lot of money to protect a very small sliver of our country.
  • I agree that this is an interesting way of looking at things, but it is a look within a vacuum. Without knowing a few more things, we know nothing. We need to know the following:

    1. What were the ratios in 2005, 2006
    2. What percentage of people within these areas move for work versus an upgrade/downgrade i.e. reasons to move (neither are fairing well now)
    3. What percentage of these populations would qualify for a loan in 2005, 2006 versus now.
    4. Number of homes held by Bank owned REITs to keep inventory off the market.

    I'm afraid that if we answer these questions, the percentage based upon number of available houses versus number of qualified buyers times the number of reasons to move (ah / qb * rm) looks a whole lot worse no matter how much you dress it up.
  • I know John. This started off as just a fun way to look at inventory. But everyone here and on Twitter has brought up some very interesting ideas on how we could actually look at this data. I'm going back to the lab and I'm going to use a couple of favors to try and expand this to be much more realistic and useful. Give me a little time and hopefully I'll come back with something that might make you go wow.
  • This is certainly and interesting and fun way to look at inventory. It obviously ignores a lot of factors, but it's cool nonetheless. I look forward to your refined follow-up piece.
  • D.O. you know if we could get this kind of info out like they do the negative it would nip this fear block right in it's tracks. Great job of putting things in a proper perspective!!!
  • Miami stats are always convoluted because there's the city of Miami which has that population and then there's unincorporated Miami-Dade which has a much larger population and different real estate stats.
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