Vacant homes across Florida’s coastal counties are impacting the housing market, according to a study cited in reports by the Orlando Business Journal (OBJ) and the online magazine, Florida Trend.
Both publications mention a study by Cinch Home Services that reportedly ranked the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville metro as No. 4 nationally, among the top 10 U.S. metro areas with the highest share of vacant homes, with 14.9% of homes unoccupied. The Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach was tied for No. 5 with 14.5%, the same rate as New Orleans.
The figures for the Space Coast and Daytona Beach area come only a few months after a different study published last June revealed similar data along Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast. Fort Myers’ Fox TV affiliate WFTX reported that Cape Coral and Fort Myers had the highest number of vacant homes among U.S. metro areas, with approximately 125,764 “ghost homes”, but the ranking may have been slightly off because it was based on 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.
