Vacancy rate

The vacancy rate is the share of housing units that are unoccupied at a given time. For rental housing, it specifically means units available for rent but not currently occupied by a tenant; a separate homeowner vacancy rate covers for-sale units not yet occupied by an owner.

vacancy rate = vacant units / total units, usually expressed as a percentage and tracked separately for the rental and for-sale markets. A low rental vacancy rate signals a tight market where demand outstrips supply, which tends to push up rents and is one of the pressures reflected in the house price index and rent burden trends. This is a distinct concept from occupancy rate in hospitality, which measures the share of rooms or units filled over a given period rather than the structural share of a housing stock sitting empty.

Planners, investors, and housing analysts use vacancy rate alongside housing affordability index and displacement-risk indicators to read the health and pressure of a local housing market. A common pitfall is treating a very low rate as uniformly positive: near-zero vacancy can indicate a healthy, high-demand market or a market so tight that it is pricing out lower-income renters, so it should be read alongside rent and income trends rather than in isolation.