It has been brought to my attention that the Times of London did a piece on Las Vegas foreclosures. In fact, they did two! But I digress. When you have quotes like this, you really need to watch yourself:

Gail Burks, the head of the Nevada Fair Housing Centre, a citizens advice bureau, said that home rage had become common in Las Vegas as dispossessed homeowners vent their frustration. “There have been five foreclosures on my street, three of which ripped everything out. This kind of thing has an impact on the wider community,” said Ms Banks, who receives about 600 requests a month now for advice on foreclosure, compared with about 200 in October last year.

There are 28,655 vacant properties on the market in Las Vegas as a result of foreclosure, Ms Banks said. Elsewhere, planned residential houses have been put on hold as demand and financing evaporates.

Needless to say, when someone starts tossing around extremely specific factoids that tend to indicate that there are thousands of vacant, bank owned properties just waiting to hit the market, I have two thoughts. First, “that sounds unlikely.” Followed by “But if it’s halfway true, there is a terrifying opportunity out there.” Now, those of you who followed me over from ShortWoman know that I am trained as a researcher. So I did some research.

First up, let’s decide how to spell the woman’s name, shall we? Burks or Banks? The editor let this pass? A quick visit to the Nevada Fair Housing Center’s website gives us a good place to start. I mean, beyond the fact that gratuitous sound in a website is never a good thing. According to their annual report, the woman’s name is Gail Burks.

The other thing you may have noticed about that annual report is that it’s from 2004. In fact, the most recent changes I can find to the site are from 2006, in the press releases section. Speaking of press releases, I am not seeing anything from which the Times could have gotten their “data” in this section.

I continued poking around the internet, and found this gentleman’s excellent two-part “deconstruction” of the Times’s article. Here’s the best part:

That’s a good one.

First: There are only 22,434 units available for sale in Las Vegas, as of the 5/17/08 GLVAR MLS database.

Second: Many of those aren’t vacant.

Third: Probably less than 10% of these for sale units have gone through foreclosure. (That’s not to say there aren’t a LOT of foreclosures in the pipeline.)

Now, these numbers are good but not without fault. I don’t have the May 17 GLVAR MLS figures in front of me, but I do have figures from earlier in the month. And according to those, about half of the roughly 22,000 available properties in the MLS are vacant (~11,000). Furthermore, about 19% are marked as having been through foreclosure (in round numbers, 5500). It is safe to say that all these are vacant. Still, 28,655 minus 5500 is roughly 23,000 homes unaccounted for.

I am willing to believe there are maybe 1000-1500 bank-owned properties that have not yet hit the MLS, but I am not willing to believe that there are 23,000 properties that are foreclosed, REO (“Real Estate Owned” is the line on the bank’s asset sheet for these properties), vacant — and yet the bank is doing nothing to sell them. If this were true, not only would there be 4 REO homes sitting on the bank’s asset sheet costing them money for every one they have on the market. It would also mean that the banks are collectively able to double the number of homes on the market. As I said, a terrifying opportunity.

It is only fair to mention that roughly 25% of the homes currently in the MLS are “Short Sales”. Many of them are vacant. Many of them have already received a NOD — Notice of Default — that starts the foreclosure process. I point this out even though it doesn’t really get us any closer to that alarmingly precise 28,655 figure Ms Burks allegedly cites. Remember, I still can’t find any actual source for that; she may have said it over the phone to a Times reporter.

But this is even more damning: remember that CNN article where we learned that 1 in every 44 Vegas homes is in foreclosure? And remember, that figure represents homes in every stage of foreclosure from Notice of Default to bank owned; many of these will still be occupied. 28,655 (vacant due to foreclosure homes) times 44 (homes for every one in foreclosure) is 1,260,820 total homes. Only 1.9 million people live in Clark County, and 283,221 are students in Clark County School District (unlikely to be homeowners).

Furthermore, in December of 2008 there were only 581,495 single family homes, 19,317 multi-family homes (condos and apartments), and 28,457 manufactured homes in the county according to the assessor’s office, which ought to know these things. The Times asks you to believe that one out of every 22 homes is not only in foreclosure, but vacant as well. While it may seem like this is plausible in some neighborhoods, it does not play out over the entire metropolitan area.

I am beginning to think that in addition to getting her name wrong, they may have misquoted her. Perhaps she said 8655? Perhaps the figure she used was for all of Nevada? Perhaps the Times should retract the article or get their facts straight.