North Carolina's Vacancy and Zombie Foreclosure Report Breakdown

North Carolina has more than 3.4 million residential homes to its name. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, more than 42,000 of those properties were either vacant or abandoned. That comes out to 1.23% of all residential homes in the state, down slightly from Q3, when the overall vacancy rate for North Carolina was 1.24%.

Of North Carolina’s more than 5,600 homes currently in some stage of foreclosure, 2.15% have been marked vacant properties or abandoned. Again, this vacancy rate is down from the third quarter, when 2.33% of pre-foreclosure properties were vacant. Often, these vacant, pre-foreclosure homes are dubbed “zombie properties” or “zombie foreclosures.”

North Carolina’s investor-owned properties see higher rates of vacancy than other property types. Of the more than 1.3 million investor-owned residential homes in the state, 34,643 — or 2.58% — were vacant or abandoned as of Q4 2019. 

The state of North Carolina comes in below national averages on overall vacancies, as well as vacancy rates on investor-owned properties and homes in foreclosure. Nationally, 1.55% of the nationals 98 million residential homes have been marked vacant or abandoned, versus North Carolina’s 1.23%. On investor-owned properties, the nation has a 3.85% vacancy rate (vs. NC’s 2.15%), and on pre-foreclosure homes, the country’s average is 2.96% (vs. NC’s 2.58%).