Home Builders Are Bleeding as Sales Run Dry, Workers Vanish · On The Market · Radar

300,000 Vacant Lots and the Housing Shortage1:10 – 13:31

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:10

Yes, James.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:11

I have an article from PR Newswire, and it is stating that there are about 300,000 vacant lots for sale, which could close 6% of the housing shortage if anyone builds on them.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:27

So the article goes on to talk about that there are 300,242 empty lots smaller than five acres that were listed for sale on Zillow in June of 2026.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:38

That represents about 17.4% of all sale listings.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:43

Building one home on each of these lots would reduce America's housing deficit by 6.3%.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

1:50

That would bring it from 4.7 million down to 4.44 million, and a lot of the lots that are for sale are large enough to build more than one home on it.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:01

The more than 300,000 lots currently listed for sale represent the lowest-hanging fruit in addressing h- the housing shortage in America.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:09

And I thought that was an interesting perspective, because there is a lot of land for sale, but that doesn't happen for no reason.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:18

And so-

Kathy FettkePanelist

2:18

[laughs]

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:18

...

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:18

I'm cheating a little bit and really talking about two articles.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:24

The literal next article that I researched said that new-home sales are at its weakest point since 2017, and that's a Newsweek article.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:34

And that article is saying that new-home sales were only up a modest 1.6% in June compared to a month earlier, but I'm not gonna go on and babble about this article.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:44

Essentially what it's saying is that builders and developers are struggling to sell the new homes they have right now.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

2:51

The lots that they are building on, they can't seem to move the inventory like they want to, and that means they are bleeding money.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:01

And so, yes, it may seem like because there's 300,000 lots available that all someone needs to do is just go build a house on it-

Kathy FettkePanelist

3:07

Just go build them.

Kathy FettkePanelist

3:08

Yeah

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:08

... and then we'll have solved the housing problem.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:11

There are so many other problems that are tied to being able to solve the housing shortage.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:16

Affordability's an issue.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:18

Interest rates are causing problems.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:19

People are worried about inflation and affording groceries.

Henry WashingtonPanelist

3:21

And so a lot of these homes that builders are building, they end up having to give away concessions and incentives to try to move the needle to get these products sold.