Numbers from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) came into question at the beginning of 2011, and since then the trade group has worked to adjust its formula and figures. According to a report from
The Wall Street Journal, NAR will release its downwardly revised statistics on home sales next week along with its latest set of data.
The revisions are reportedly for home sales starting in 2007 through 2010 and for the first 10 months of this year. The group said the downwardly revised statistics will not change the monthly percentages of sales volume all that much. The number of months needed to exhaust the supply of homes and median home price estimates will not be revised, according to the report.
Reasons listed by the association for the revision included, population shifts; declines in for-sale-by-owner transactions that do not include real estate agents; and sales being reported on more than one real estate listing service.
According to The Journal, 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 taken longer than anticipated in the absence of decennial data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which are no longer collected.”
CoreLogic was one company in particular that questioned NAR’s statistics. It found a smaller number of home sales by tracking property records through local courthouses.