Real Estate News

The NAR will be revising housing numbers based on some discrepancies it had in reporting home sales. Essentially, this will make the housing slump look even worse. Check out the date from the Wall Street Journal:

Earlier this year, outside analysts called into question some of the assumptions behind the trade group’s data. For example, CoreLogic Inc., an independent housing data firm, found a far smaller number of home sales by tracking property records through local courthouses.

The Realtors’ group cited several reasons for its decision to revise sales figures downward. NAR said it was overcompensating for sales that did not happen on the regional and local real estate listing services from which the group gets its data. Those “multiple-listing services” have consolidated in recent years, giving those firms wider coverage of housing markets.Other factors leading to the downward revision included geographic population shifts, a decline in the share of “for sale by owner” transactions that were completed without a real estate agent, some new-home sales also being reported by real estate listing services and some sales being reported on more than one listing service, NAR said.The group typically produces revisions of home-sales data at the end of every decade based on the latest census survey data. But because the 2010 Census didn’t ask U.S. residents about home sales, NAR has devised a new way to build its home-sales model, which contributed to a delay in publishing revisions.The trade group said it captured “a larger share of actual transactions than was assumed in the calculation model based on the 2000 Census; resolving these issues has taking longer than anticipated in the absence of decennial data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which are no longer collected.”

via Housing Bust to Look Worse With NAR Sales Data Revised – Developments – WSJ.