Superchunk, vacant housing can simply be a house built with no owner yet, a multihome home owner selling or renting the home or a dozen other options but it most certainly doesn't mean actual foreclosures.
Also, I never provided any links though I'm assuming you meant NJ5.
And according to his link the first half of 2009 saw "1.5 million properties received a default or auction notice or were seized by banks" which is just an 15% increase from the previous year. Meaning that the first half of 2008 had a total of 1.3 million "properties received a default or auction notice or were seized by banks".
After some research it looks as though 2007 saw about about 2 million foreclosures, 2008 saw 3 million and 2009 could see 5 million.
2007: 2 million x $230k = $460 billion
2008: 3 million x $200k = $600 billion
2009: 5 million x $175k = $875 billion
2010: ? x ? = ?
Current tally for bailout = $1.935 trillion.
The rEVOLution is not being televised
