Florida home to 1.6m empty properties

Some 1.6 million homes are sitting empty in Florida, the state's census bureau has revealed.

The number of unoccupied homes in the region has risen by 63 per cent over the past ten years, with such high levels of oversupply expected to keep home prices depressed.

In California, eight per cent of the state's housing units are now vacant, while in Nevada 14 per cent of residential homes are empty.

As such, full recovery of the housing market is expected to be a long and drawn out process, according to Ingo Winzer, a housing market analyst and founder of Local Market Monitor.

Mr Winzer forecast that prices in Florida will drop even further, another five per cent in 2011 and three per cent in 2012.

"Even after that, they're not going to rebound, they'll just sit on the bottom," he said.

The news may prompt some individuals to look at property in the US, with the current low prices meaning that there is an opportunity to pick up a bargain.

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