Thanks, Pete, for mentioning the under construction issue. That's definitely also a concern. They used to call it something like "sheltered from the elements," meaning that the roof was up and the windows were in.

I also agree that there are big problems with the postal vacancy survey. I've never used those data because I don't trust them, plus they were delivered at the zip code level which is really too large to be of any use in a multi-zip code city.

In past censuses, when the bureau claimed to provide "characteristics of vacancies" I never trusted those data either, again because collecting that information is not the decennial census' primary missing. In turn, this means that "vacant for sale" and "vacant for rent" are shaky concepts. Add to that the more modern problem of condos which are sometimes occupied by their owners and sometimes on the vacation rental market...! Impossible to classify.

Patty Becker

At 06:28 PM 4/26/2011, you wrote:

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I’m going to respectfully disagree re: HUD User’s USPS Occupancy/Vacancy rates.
Those occupancy/vacancy rates from HUD User are really wacky.

It was a great idea to leverage the postal service – but it’s not the mail-carrier’s primary mission or duty, so there’s very uneven and inconsistent record-keeping (lots of “status undetermined” records). And where status is determined I think the carriers’ record-keeping may be biased toward false positives (erroneously high occupancy rates)… perhaps based on the simple fact that junk mail never stops coming?

________________________

Todd Graham
Principal Forecaster and Project Manager
Metropolitan Council
390 Robert Street North
Saint Paul, MN 55101

ph: 651/602-1322
email: todd.graham@metc.state.mn.us
in: www.linkedin.com/in/toddgraham
web: http://www.metrocouncil.org/data/
________________________

From: ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net [ mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Mara Kaminowitz
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 11:33 AM
To: ctpp-news@chrispy.net
Subject: RE: [CTPP] Census Vacant Structure Determination

The HUD/USPS dataset may also be of use. The program is on hold but data is available up to Sept. 2010.