I've done some initial looking into the McCain house list question -- how many homes he owns, how swank they are, why he's not sure how many he owns, etc. And the question seems more interpretive than investigative. In other words, there appears to be a relatively straightforward list of the properties the McCain's own. The question is how to enumerate them in terms of homes, especially in cases where a single McCain estate contains several different 'houses'. Another complexity comes in the McCain's primary residence, the $4.7 million condo in Phoenix. In that case, McCain bought two separate condos (i.e., two homes) and combined them into one mega-home.

One group, Progressive Accountability, counts 10 homes. And for now we're treating that as the baseline enumeration.

Late Update: The Obama campaign now has an ad up hitting McCain's gaffe. Interestingly, in what might be a sign of the new politics, the Obama campaign decides to go with what I think is the lowest possible enumeration - a mere 7 houses. Probably this is from counting the multi-home estates as single homes. But I'm not sure.

Later Update: The house issue also puts in a new context McCain's suggestion that you're only 'rich' when you're making an annual income of $5 million.

Getting Up In John McCain Number of Houses Update: Here's the best list of McCain cribs I've seen so far.

Jake Piles on Update: Jake Piles On.