As I try to look into this more, I’m also finding that the vacancy rate seems really low in England. 676,304 vacant homes / 24.9 million total homes gives a vacancy rate of 2.7%
Why is the ratio (vacant homes/total homes) the right thing to look at, if a single metric is to be considered for argument?
The vacancy rate takes into account the size of the total market. If you told me 1 million people are unemployed in a country, the situation is likely to be very different if the total population of the country is 10 million vs. 100 million. Similarly, 700k vacant homes is a big deal if that’s 10% of the market, maybe not as big of a deal if it’s the amount of structural vacancy you’d expect to see in a healthy market, i.e. the amount of homes that are temporarily vacant because they are in the process of being sold.
There are likely other metrics worth looking at, though, as one metric can never tell the whole story as it will always hide relevant details and mash together very different situations that nevertheless produce the same measured value on a particular metric.
Ok, I agree that you have to normalize the number of vacant homes. The total number of homes is the largest denominator that makes sense. My doubt was if the denominator could be something smaller than the number of total homes.
In different words, my knowledge of the housing market is not sufficient to say if 2.7% counts as small or large. Why does it “seem really low”?
Analogous example that comes to my mind: if I am a male searching for a female mate, I prefer cities with higher female/male ratio. Say town A has 49-51, and town B has 51-49. Is a 2% difference large or small? I argue it could be large, for what matters for finding a mate: if most couples in a town are already locked, i.e., people in long term relationships, then the “free market” of dating is much more gender-skewed than a 2% difference.
To be concrete: say 90 people are paired, and 10 are single. Then removing the paired 45:45, the gender ratio within singles remains 4:6 in town A, and 6:4 in town B, i.e., in town A there are 2 single females for each 3 single males.
Thus the set that makes the ratio more intuitively “large” or “small” is the set of singles rather than the set of all people.
Getting back to housing: maybe there is a smaller set contaning all vacant homes, or even a more restrictive set to consider that contains only some vacant homes, that is more appropriate. I don’t know though.
Why is the ratio (vacant homes/total homes) the right thing to look at, if a single metric is to be considered for argument?
The vacancy rate takes into account the size of the total market. If you told me 1 million people are unemployed in a country, the situation is likely to be very different if the total population of the country is 10 million vs. 100 million. Similarly, 700k vacant homes is a big deal if that’s 10% of the market, maybe not as big of a deal if it’s the amount of structural vacancy you’d expect to see in a healthy market, i.e. the amount of homes that are temporarily vacant because they are in the process of being sold.
There are likely other metrics worth looking at, though, as one metric can never tell the whole story as it will always hide relevant details and mash together very different situations that nevertheless produce the same measured value on a particular metric.
Ok, I agree that you have to normalize the number of vacant homes. The total number of homes is the largest denominator that makes sense. My doubt was if the denominator could be something smaller than the number of total homes.
In different words, my knowledge of the housing market is not sufficient to say if 2.7% counts as small or large. Why does it “seem really low”?
Analogous example that comes to my mind: if I am a male searching for a female mate, I prefer cities with higher female/male ratio. Say town A has 49-51, and town B has 51-49. Is a 2% difference large or small? I argue it could be large, for what matters for finding a mate: if most couples in a town are already locked, i.e., people in long term relationships, then the “free market” of dating is much more gender-skewed than a 2% difference.
To be concrete: say 90 people are paired, and 10 are single. Then removing the paired 45:45, the gender ratio within singles remains 4:6 in town A, and 6:4 in town B, i.e., in town A there are 2 single females for each 3 single males.
Thus the set that makes the ratio more intuitively “large” or “small” is the set of singles rather than the set of all people.
Getting back to housing: maybe there is a smaller set contaning all vacant homes, or even a more restrictive set to consider that contains only some vacant homes, that is more appropriate. I don’t know though.