If you want to see what a population decline and too much inventory can do to a city, take a look at Buffalo, New York. The city has seen it’s population decline for the past 50 years and parts of the city are now ghost towns.

This is not a result of overbuilding, it is a facet of a city in decline. The combination of high taxes, declining industry, and little opportunity has left 18,000 vacant. The city is the largest landlord with ownership of nearly 7,000 homes, mostly vacant. 

And the vacancies are not isolated. 35 percent of the streets in the city have at least one vacant home.

When we talk about excess inventory, this is exactly what we worry about. Overbuilding and vacancies tend to feed on themselves. Unless gentrification comes quickly to a neighborhood families tend to flee the neighborhood. Housing prices plummet and it is easier to walk away.

Add to that very high property taxes and the city ends up owning too much property to take care of creating another layer of blight.

I wish Buffalo success, but it will be a tough road to travel with all of the issues it is facing on the housing front.  

Buffalo’s housing crisis, the result of 50 years of population loss, has rapidly accelerated in recent years. The city is now a community where 23 percent of the housing units are vacant, according to a 2006 census estimate.

That translates into about 18,000 houses, or about one of every five properties in the city. The lion’s share are on the East Side and West Side.

The crisis is so big, so widespread, experts say, it may represent the single biggest challenge facing Buffalo’s neighborhoods.  via The Buffalo News.

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