Don't you just love it when the Geniuses get it wrong?
I am introducing a Genius Award for those times when it becomes so obvious that the 'Experts' don't have a clue. This issues winners are the Economists at the National Association of Realtors (NAR) who seem to have overstated home sales for the last three years.
Inman News and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that NAR has systematically overstated Home sales since 2007. An outfit called Corelogic outed NAR after trying to explain the divergence of their data with data reported by NAR. Now, NAR and Corelogic track different data. NAR tracks data reported by Multiple Listing Services while Corelogic reports on sales recorded by County Clerks. So it is not surprising that the raw numbers differ. You would expect that the trends would be similar. However, in 2008 NAR reported a 5.7% drop in home sales vs Corelogics data showing a 10.8% drop. You can follow this link to see a graphic from the WSJ that demonstrates the divergence of the data: http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BK393_HOMEDA_NS_20110221184502.jpg
Who cares? You do if you are considering a home purchase. If the Corelogic data is correct, the pain in the Real Estate market will continue for longer that has been previously anticipated.
