How and Why Housing Is Holding Back the Recovery

Neil Irwin has an interesting piece in the NYT's Upshot section about how housing is holding back the recovery. There are two points worth adding.

First, the vacancy rate continues to be well above historic averages. In the fourth quarter of 2013, the most recent period for which data are available, the vacancy rate was still over 10.0 percent. This compares to a vacancy rate that averaged less than 8.5 percent in the pre-bubble years. This translates into a large number of empty units that w...