In today’s crazy real estate market, with home prices falling, companies with names like Fannie and Freddiewielding God-like power and real estate agents permeating bench ads with increasingly fierce hair, determining the state of one’s real estate assets can be tricky.

Just ask John McCain — who, in a recent interview, admitted that he didn’t know how many houses he and his wife Cindy own. “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain said. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.” Democrats, of course, jumped on this.

My personal answer to the question would have been, “Zero. I don’t own any homes.”In order to boost my populist credentials, I would have added, “My clothes are leased and my car does not come anywhere close to the Platonic idea of a car. These are not my own teeth.”Unlike McCain, I established myself long ago as a man of the people.

For the record, McCain either owns four, seven, eight or 10 homes. According to The Washington Post, the McCain family owns a ranch in Hidden Valley, Arizona, a condominium in downtown Phoenix, a condominium in La Jolla, California, two condominiums in Coronado, California, and a condominium in Arlington, Virginia. According to Politico, the family owns two more condominiums in Phoenix.

The Obama campaign responded to the McCain quote by releasing the television ad Seven, which juxtaposes a foreclosure sign on a suburban home with news that the GOP’s presidential candidate can’t remember how many houses he owns. On The Tonight Show, host Jay Leno needled his guest McCain about the topic. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama used the quote almost immediately to say his rival is out of touch with the American people.

I disagree.

Not knowing how many homes you own means something - just not that.

Home ownership is part of the American dream. People who own one home often wish they owned a second, so they have somewhere else to go besides home. This is true even of people who do not own a home yet. We still want the second one. Once you own two, three is within reach. You own a main home, a secondary summer home and a ski home. Next thing you know, the wife is shopping for homes at outlet stores, the kids are buying homes online and one day while you’re driving from one of your homes to another one of your homes, you see a deal on a home you can’t afford not to buy. Bang - now you have seven homes and you don’t even know it.

At a barbecue at home number six in Coronado (home number six is always in Coronado), someone asks, “How many homes do you own?” And you say, “I’m not sure.” Then Gary - if you’re in Coronado, the guy’s name is definitely Gary - says, “That’s badass.”And it is. It is totally badass not to know how many homes you own. Deep down in every red-blooded American’s heart, there is a part of us that longs to reach the rarefied financial status that induces home-quantity amnesia.

Is John McCain out of touch for not knowing how many homes he owns? No. He is a hypothetical BBQ badass - a man who has reached the financial end of the American dream, albeit by marrying well. The real issue confronting McCain is that he appears either to be disdainful of basic facts or just plain forgetful. And that makes him sound like the old man he is trying so hard not to be.

–Joe Donatelli

Photo by Tyler Westcott