By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

An area publication reported Sunday that Marion had the highest percentage of vacant homes in the state with 46.4 percent residences vacant.

“Obviously that is not accurate,” Heerey Real Estate owner Lori Heerey said.

The publication said the numbers were based on the American Community Survey. Matthew Milbrodt, an information service specialist for the Kansas City Census Office, directed the Marion County Record to the American Community Survey numbers available at the U.S. Census Bureau’s website. The numbers there reported that out of 1,025 total housing units, 84 were vacant, 8.2 percent.

“I don’t know where they got their numbers,” Milbrodt said of the publication.

Milbrodt cautioned that the margin of error for the survey is high. There is a margin of error of 110 on the number of total housing units and 56 on vacant houses. According to ACS numbers, Marion could have as many as 140 vacant houses, or 13.4 percent vacant houses. The number could be as low as 28, or 3 percent.

While the American Community Survey is part of the Census Bureau, the ACS survey is a long-form survey that is conducted annually. Milbrodt said that about 250,000 surveys are delivered each month with 3 million delivered yearly.

“Marion’s sample would be quite small,” Milbrodt said.

The process for determining a vacant home is as follows. The ACS sends one survey to a home and if there is not a response another survey is mailed. If there is still no response from the residence, the household is called. If there is no response to the call, a sample of homes are selected for door-to-door surveys conducted by field representatives. Only a field representative can determine if a residence is vacant.

“Just because we don’t get a questionnaire back doesn’t mean we say it’s vacant,” Milbrodt said.

The most prevelant real estate agent in Marion, Heerey has 18 listings currently available in the city of Marion, nine would qualify as vacant. She has four listings at Marion County Lake, two are summer homes.

Heerey also said she knows of three vacant homes where the children of parents in nursing homes have let the houses set empty.

“It’s just unfortunate,” Heerey said. “One of the worst things on a home is to let it sit vacant.”

Including Heerey’s and other homes for sale, city building inspector Marty Frederickson said there could be no more than 20 vacancies. He added there might be four or five non-livable homes ready for demolition. He also said there may be some houses or apartments empty, waiting to be rented.

“I can tell you that we get calls in our office every single week of people wanting rentals,” Heerey said. “I bet 99.9 percent of rentals in town are full.”

Utility Billing Clerk Becky Makovec said there were 1,184 active electric accounts in Marion and about 989 water accounts. Makovec said those numbers fluctuate month to month, some people have garage meters or two meters on their homes, and that often people will keep the utilities running in vacant homes to make them easier to show.

Even with Heerey’s 22 total listings, the three houses Heerey knows are vacant, and Frederickson’s projected number of 20 vacant homes, 45 vacant residences out of 1,000 equates to 4.5 percent of vacant homes in Marion, not even close to the 46.4 percent of empty residences previously reported.

“I couldn’t imagine it being half that,” Marion Administrator Doug Kjellin said. “That would be 23 percent. Every block would have a house for sale.”

Kjellin believes the actual number to be closer to 1 percent.

“I’ll accept 1 percent,” Kjellin said. “Just pull out your reason calculator; it doesn’t make sense.”

Heerey believes the reason for the 46.4 percent number reported by the ACS is that the surveyors tallied homes at Marion County Lake.

“A lot of those people just have Marion addresses for lake homes,” Heerey said. “They don’t have out-of-town addresses. There are a lot of spring and summer homes out there.”

Kjellin added that “For Sale” signs in front of Marion residences have become a more common sight.

“It seems like there are a lot of signs on street corners,” he said.

Heerey said she has been busy but this year has been the most fruitful of her seven years working in the real estate business in Marion.

“That has to do with interest rates,” Heerey said. “Marion, as far as real estate, is alive and well.”