Here's How Many California Homes Are Sitting Vacant

A recent report using census data found that there are about 16 million homes sitting empty across the U.S. According to KTLA, the study by LendingTree ranked the 50 states by how many unoccupied homes they currently have.

Of the 16 million vacant homes in the U.S., over 1 million of those are in California. While California ranked low on the list (No. 46), the state is so large that it still had the second-highest number of empty homes. The report says 8.7% of California's housing stock is vacant, which totals to about 1.2 million empty homes.

The only other state with more empty homes was Florida, which has about 1.7 million vacant units. The states with the highest vacancy rates were Vermont, Maine, and Alaska. Each of those states has between 20% to 22% of its housing stock vacant. Combined, the three states have more than 315,000 unoccupied units.

The report points out that there are many reasons a home could be vacant. It could be on the market or be a vacation home, or it's uninhabitable.

Here are the states with the highest vacancy rates:

1. Vermont (22.9%)
2. Maine (22.7%)
3. Alaska (20.5%)
4. West Virginia (18.1%)
5. Alabama (17.7%)
6. Florida (17.1%)
7. New Hampshire (16.7%)
8. Mississippi (16.3%)
9. Louisiana (16.2%)
10. Wyoming (15.9%)