More than 300,000 empty lots are sitting for sale across the country — and building on just one of each could shrink America’s housing shortage by more than 6 percent.
That’s according to new research from Zillow, which found the empty lots, all 5 acres or smaller, made up 17.4 percent of all for-sale listings nationally in June. Building on each of them would bring the national housing deficit from 4.7 million homes down to roughly 4.44 million, Zillow found.
The typical lot for sale spans 0.57 acres, large enough in many cases to support more than one home, according to Zillow, meaning the estimated reduction is conservative.
Kara Ng | Credit: Zillow
“The more than 300,000 lots currently listed for sale represent the lowest-hanging fruit in addressing a housing shortage that’s two decades in the making,” Kara Ng, senior economist at Zillow, said in a statement. Loosening zoning rules, streamlining permitting and expanding financing access would reduce the cost and uncertainty holding back construction, Ng said.
Florida had the most empty lots listed at 42,601, followed by Texas, California, North Carolina and Georgia, per Zillow’s data. Rural markets carried the highest concentration of empty lots at 25.3 percent of listings, compared with 13.6 percent in the suburbs and 9 percent in urban areas.
Rural lots also came cheapest per acre, with a median around $75,000, versus more than $181,000 per acre in the suburbs and about $500,000 per acre in urban areas, Zillow found.
Zillow has been participating in a 12-week federal tech sprint with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Opportunity Project this summer, working to expand access to small-dollar housing loans in rural communities and reduce friction for buyers looking to purchase and build on empty lots. Recent legislation, including the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is also addressing some of the barriers to building, according to the release.
