Rethinking Empty Housing: Vacancy Beyond Physical Absence

At the 2025 Annual Housing Studies Association (HSA) conference, I had the pleasure of presenting an early conceptual overview of my doctoral research on housing vacancy. My research begins from a paradox that has become increasingly visible across cities worldwide: while housing need continues to grow, substantial numbers of homes remain empty. Rising house prices, deepening affordability crises and increasing homelessness coexist alongside large stocks of vacant dwellings. This contradiction raises two central questions that guide my research: what exactly do we mean when we talk about “empty housing”, and why is empty housing emerging as a critical phenomenon in the context of the global housing affordability crisis? More broadly, I explore how the rise of empty housing reflects deeper socio-economic and political transformations shaping contemporary housing systems.

Academic interest in housing vacancy began to emerge in the mid-twentieth century, when processes of urban abandonment became visible across parts of North America and Europe. These early studies linked vacancy primarily to post-war industrial restructuring, rural-to-urban migration, and shifting demographic patterns. By the 1970s, vacancy had become increasingly associated with the phenomenon of shrinking cities, where population loss and economic restructuring produced significant levels of underused housing stock (Caramaschi and Chiodelli, 2023). In this context, empty housing was largely interpreted as a consequence of urban decline rather than as a structural feature of housing systems.

However, as I discuss in my research, the meaning and dynamics of vacancy began to shift significantly from the 1990s onwards with the growing financialization of housing markets. Housing increasingly came to function not primarily as shelter but as a financial asset and store of wealth. In financialized neoliberal markets, housing has become a central mechanism for economic growth and capital accumulation (Aalbers and Christophers, 2014), while real estate markets have evolved into global sites of capital accumulation (Harvey, 2002; Aalbers, 2019). Within this context, empty housing is no longer simply a by-product of urban decline. Instead, it becomes embedded within broader processes of commodification, speculative investment and financialised urban development.

From a conventional economic perspective, a certain level of vacancy is often considered necessary for the functioning of housing markets. Vacancy allows for mobility between occupancies, enabling turnover between tenants and owners and facilitating adjustments within housing markets. Many studies therefore refer to the concept of “natural vacancy”, suggesting that vacancy rates of around 5% may be necessary to maintain market fluidity (Gabriel and Nothaft, 2001; Glock and Häussermann, 2004; Molloy, 2016). Yet while some degree of vacancy may be expected, the persistence of large numbers of empty homes in contexts of housing shortage raises broader questions about how housing systems operate.

This leads to a deceptively simple question: what counts as empty housing? At first glance, empty housing may appear to refer simply to unused dwellings. In practice, however, the concept is far more complex. The literature shows that vacancy encompasses a wide range of situations, including abandoned buildings, unfinished housing developments, secondary homes, speculative holdings and dwellings used intermittently through short-term rental markets. Each of these forms reflects different economic motivations, regulatory frameworks and social dynamics.

In my research, I emphasise that vacancy is also fundamentally time-sensitive (Dimitrakou, 2022; Shi et al., 2022). Whether a dwelling is classified as vacant often depends on how long it has remained empty. In many studies, up to six months of non-occupation may fall within what is sometimes described as “natural vacancy”, reflecting normal turnover within housing markets. However, when housing remains empty for longer periods, vacancy begins to signal deeper structural dynamics such as speculative investment strategies, stalled development processes or uneven urban development.

Importantly, the way vacancy is defined shapes how it is measured and governed. As Caramaschi and Chiodelli (2023) argue, the concept of housing emptiness remains fragmented and contested across different studies and policy contexts. Narrow definitions often capture only visible forms of emptiness, such as abandoned or dilapidated buildings, because these are easier to identify through administrative records or visual inspection. Yet such approaches risk overlooking less visible but increasingly significant forms of vacancy.

Homes may appear occupied in official statistics while remaining functionally empty as speculative assets, investment vehicles or intermittently used secondary residences. In this sense, vacancy is not simply about empty buildings; it reflects broader transformations in how housing functions within contemporary urban economies. As housing increasingly operates as a commodity and store of wealth, its social function as shelter becomes progressively marginalised.

From this perspective, I argue that empty housing should not be understood solely as a technical issue of market imbalance. Instead, vacancy reveals deeper political and economic dynamics shaping urban space. Empty homes are not simply anomalies within housing markets; they are spatial manifestations of broader processes of accumulation, exclusion and dispossession embedded within financialised housing systems. Addressing vacancy therefore requires more than technical policy solutions; it requires rethinking how housing systems operate and whose interests they ultimately serve.

References

Aalbers, M.B. (2019) ‘Financial geography II: Financial geographies of housing and real estate’, Progress in Human Geography, 43(2), pp. 376–387. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518819503.

Aalbers, M.B. and Christophers, B. (2014) ‘Centring Housing in Political Economy’, Housing, Theory and Society, 31(4), pp. 373–394. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2014.947082.

Caramaschi, S. and Chiodelli, F. (2023) ‘Reconceptualising housing emptiness beyond vacancy and abandonment’, International Journal of Housing Policy, 23(3), pp. 588–611. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2022.2074268.

Dimitrakou, I. (2022) ‘A sense of absence: Resituating housing vacancy in post-crisis Athens’, Housing Studies, 37(6), pp. 997–1014. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2021.1988064.

Gabriel, S.A. and Nothaft, F.E. (2001) ‘Rental Housing Markets, the Incidence and Duration of Vacancy, and the Natural Vacancy Rate’, Journal of Urban Economics, 49(1), pp. 121–149. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1006/juec.2000.2187.

Glock, B. and Häussermann, H. (2004) ‘New trends in urban development and public policy in eastern Germany: dealing with the vacant housing problem at the local level.’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(4), pp. 919–929. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00560.x.

Harvey, D. (2002) Spaces of Capital. 0 edn. Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203821695.

Molloy, R. (2016) ‘Long-term vacant housing in the United States’, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 59, pp. 118–129. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2016.06.002.

Shi, L. et al. (2022) ‘Estimating housing vacancy rates at block level: The example of Guiyang, China’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 224, p. 104431. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104431.