America's 10 sickest housing markets

According to one estimate, the city had 90,000 abandoned or vacant lots or residential homes in 2010. Sauter updated 8/5/2011 7:18:42 AM ET 2011-08-05T11:18:42 Font: + - For three years, the Real Estate market has been going in one direction — primarily down. Recent S&P/Case-Shiller data show that among the top 20 housing markets in the U. Others, like Washington and Boston, have began to at least stabilize from a year ago. Robert Shiller has been stating that home prices could fall another 10 percent in the next year. Inventories in some major metropolitan areas would take years of sales to get back to 2005 levels. Then, the normal inventory of Homes for Sale was replaced on average every six months and it was unusual for a house to be on the market for a year. Foreclosure rates remain high and only the robo-signing scandal has slowed the process. Once this is resolved, economists fear the market will be flooded with even more vacant, unsold homes. These are markets where demand has clearly collapsed. These are cities where the requirement for living space has dropped well below the national average. Further, vacancy rates of many cities were stable during the recession, but accelerated sharply higher in the last year. Similarly, housing prices in several of these markets have decreased at a faster rate in the last three quarters than during the recession. Louis, Dayton, and Atlanta, also tend to be larger and older among the top 75 metropolitan areas. Their economies were damaged long before the recession. Obviously, these levels of unused inventory have the effect of driving down both home and rental prices month after month. It also means that there is comparatively little demand for the purchase of new or existing homes. These ten markets are essentially dead as far as real estate prices and sales activity are concerned. From last year, home sales in Oklahoma state dropped by 7. Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, the median home price in the city dropped by more than 8 percent. This loss had a negative impact on the city's real estate market. Vacancy rates have continued to rise, increasing from under 2 percent one year ago to 3. The rise in vacancy rates has occurred while the median sales price for single family homes has fallen more than 19 percent since 2008. While rental vacancy rate, which is currently at 11. The city has a relatively high rate of unemployment, at 8. The median home price in the city is down by $19,000, or more than 13 percent, since 2008. Between the second quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year, prices dropped by more than $25,000. Part of the Detroit-Warren-Livonia metropolitan area, it has been among the hardest hit cities in the country. Since 2005, the metropolitan area has lost approximately 323,400 jobs. Unemployment in the Motor City almost reached 30 percent in 2009. According to one estimate, the city had 90,000 abandoned or vacant lots or residential homes in 2010. One of the reasons the city is not at the top of this list is that the city had so many vacant properties that a huge portion of them were demolished. At one time, Dayton was a much larger city and an economic powerhouse. The Ohio city, which was a major manufacturing center, was at one point awarded more patents each year than any other place in the U. The city has a particularly bad unemployment rate of 9. Median housing price, which stood at $109,000 in 2008, has fallen by 29 percent, or $27,000, between 2008 and the first quarter of this year. However, according to one local news station, the area has built more housing structures than it could fill following Katrina. The city has not been able to break free of this situation, as both homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates have increased not only since last year, but since the last quarter as well. The city, which had a significant influx of new residents, particularly from the northeast, has been hit hard. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city had lost nearly 25,000 jobs between June of 2010 and June of this year. Between 2008 and the first quarter of this year, homes have lost more than a third of their value, dropping in price by nearly $50,000. Homeowner vacancy rates: 4 percent (9th) Rental vacancy rates: 13. The metropolitan area's homeowner vacancy rate has increased from 2. In the city's defense, its rental vacancy rate has decreased from a staggering 21. This is still among the highest in the country, but it is an improvement. In 2009, while vacancy had not even reached its worst point, the mayor's office of Indianapolis recognized the serious problem the city faced. The city's plan to help solve the abandoned home issue states: "Indianapolis, like many communities, faces a significant challenge in dealing with vacant and abandoned properties. This challenge is exacerbated both by weaknesses in the local and regional housing markets – including an oversupply of housing relative to demand — and by the high and growing rate of foreclosures. The city had a booming residential housing market before the crash. Since then, demand is so low that median home prices have dropped 18 percent in the past year and 33 percent since 2008. In addition, the city has among the highest rate of foreclosures in the country. We picked the cities with the worst rates in each of the two categories to create meta-data ranks. We then removed the cities that had either improved homeowner vacancy rate in either the last twelve months or the last quarter. We believed that any sign of improvement in homeowner vacancies, the more telling of the vacancy rates, should disqualify a city. To improve our analysis, we also looked at unemployment rates for these cities provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We also used historical median home prices, as provided by the National Association of Realtors. Popular stories currently unavailable Top videos Popular videos currently unavailable msnbc. Jump to discussion America's 10 sickest housing markets Jump to data See the latest rates around the country Jump to related Real estate. Homes for Sale