NAR to Revise Existing Home Sales Data – Five Whole Years Worth

The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) willrnhold a press conference next week to announce revisions to its data on sales ofrnpreviously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October 2011.  NAR’s initial press release yesterday madernthis sound like a routine tweaking of numbers, i.e., “The National Association of Realtors® will releasernbenchmark revisions to existing-home sales”, and, “Although there are downwardrnrevisions for total sales in recent years, there is little change to previouslyrnreported monthly comparisons or characterizations based on percentagernchange.  There is a comparable downward revision to unsold inventory, sornthere is no change to relative month’s supply.  Also, there is no changernto median home prices.”</p

However, arnsubsequent statement from the association that begins with the statement, “NAR takes itsrnrole as a leading source for housing information very seriously” and rumors runningrnthrough the industry indicate the situation may be more serious and potentially much more embarrassing to the traderngroup. </p

Reuters isrnreporting that the downward revision of the multi-year accumulation of salesrninformation is the result of double counting and will indicate a much weakerrnhousing market than previously thought.  NARrnsaid that a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listedrnmore than once and some new home sales may have been included in existing homernsales figures.</p

NAR said, “All major statistical data series gornthrough periodic reviews and revisions to ensure that sampling and methodologyrnkeep up with changes in the market. Factors like population changes in sampledrnareas, growth in MLS coverage areas, declines in for-sale-by-ownerrntransactions, and some individual sales being recorded in more than one MLSrnhave contributed to an updrift in EHS data over the past few years, and thisrnrebenchmarking will ensure more accurate and reliable information.”</p

Chicago Agent</iMagazine said that the blog CalculatedrnRisk first uncovered the overstated sales figures in January and “each release ofrnexisting-home sales data has been greeted with increasing skepticism.  NAR finally did admit in November that it hadrnbeen exaggerating with its statistics.”</p