Many of us have heard of booming, seller-friendly housing markets across the country. Put a home on the market and it is snapped up at twice the price before a “for sale” sign has been put into the ground.

But a closer look at the numbers by LendingTree tells a more patchwork tale. Yes, the market is hot in some states. In others, there is considerably less demand. The online lender looked at the number of homes sitting vacant in each state and found that West Virginia has the fourth-highest vacancy rate in the country, at 18.12% of our 896,570 housing units. Such a high rate could mean a number of things. Homes could be on the market, used as vacation homes, or simply abandoned and/or no longer inhabitable.

To be fair, homes in certain markets in the state — Morgantown, Wheeling, Charleston and Martinsburg, to name a few ­– don’t last long once listed for sale. But overall, West Virginia is struggling with vacant homes.

According to LendingTree, median home prices across the 10 states with the highest vacancy rates are an average of about $168,000 lower than in the 10 states with the lowest vacancy rates. In the Mountain State, the median home value is $130,000 — lowest in the nation by nearly $5,000.

And still, there are too many people for whom the median home value in West Virginia is prohibitively high; and there are too many homes sitting vacant.

It is a symptom of two of our state’s biggest ills — families living in poverty; and families who have abandoned the state for better opportunities elsewhere.

Many local communities are now discussing how to spend money the likes of which we may never see flood into public coffers again. Should we hope to reverse trends, communities will have to work together to improve quality of life; and the employment and educational opportunities that attract and keep families here. Numbers such as those presented by LendingTree are a reminder it is our responsibility to ask whether our public work is doing good for the most residents possible.