Coming soon to your neighborhood – vacant homes.

The percentage of vacant homes in the U.S. rose from 2.6 percent to 2.7 percent in the third quarter of 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday. There were 2.09 million vacant properties available for sale, up from 1.99 million, the Census said. This number includes both listed properties and those that banks are holding without listing. I suppose that the headline above is too late for most neighborhoods. There are vacant or abandoned homes in almost every neighborhood, no matter how rich those neighborhoods may look to the casual observer.

In fact in some areas there are likely more vacant homes in the upscale neighborhoods than in the more modest areas. Do you recall that cute ad with the guy talking about all his stuff , his kids expensive activities, his club memberships and his big house? Remember how it ends? With him saying “Help Me!” He was the poster child for the excesses that lead to a lot of the mess that we are still in today.

What may be a little frustrating to us as Realtors is that phrase above about the banks holding houses off the market. We certainly know that to be true and it’s beginning to feel a little like the Chinese death of a thousand cuts. Instead of unleashing the tsunami of foreclosed homes that we know is out there, the banks are dribbling them out a few at a time, in hopes of holding up prices/values. It’s not working! Values continue down and the market gets more and more acclimated to the “foreclosures of the week” – newly released bargain basement McMansions. If anything the homes that were held back have lost more value while they sat in inventory and will continue to lose in this market.

Here’s an idea for the government that would help create jobs and help solve the current housing crisis – tear them all down. That’s right; every time that HUD gets a house back or FHA or Fannie or Freddie, just send out a wrecking crew and tear it down. Of course there would have to be a big buildup of home demolition crews; so, jobs would be created by that demand. Then, when enough of the foreclosed houses had been torn down there’d be demand for more new homes, so the building industry would recover with more jobs being created.

As a by-product of the process of demolition lots of new open spaces would be created which could become parks or community gardens – more jobs for landscapers or farmers.. And, of course, along with the wailing and gnashing of teeth there would be people organizing protests against this carnage and they would need signs and other protest provisions, so more jobs would be created.

Out of all of this new job creation would come a hunger for bigger and better homes and the banks could create new financial products to make it easier for those workers to get bigger and bigger homes until…oh, wait; we’ve been done this path before. Never mind!