" Existing home sales during the housing bust were actually 14.3% worse than previously reported, a revision to Realtors' group numbers shows.
On Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) revised home sale counts back to 2007 due to flaws in their original data analysis.
In 2007, there were actually just 5.04 million existing home sales, 11% less than the 5.65 million originally reported. Even worse were 2008 and 2009, when there were 16% fewer sales than originally reported. Sales in 2010 were 15% lower.
"The errors started in 2007 and continued to accumulate over time," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist.
The accuracy of the data is important. Private companies like residential real estate developers rely on it for planning and policy makers make decisions based on it.
HOME BUILDING SPIKES HIGHER
The data is "key to the economic outlook," said Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics, "and the revisions help to explain the severity of the housing crash."
David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, said its members use existing home sales as reported by NAR as a gauge of the overall health of the housing market." [Continue reading...]
No comments:
Post a Comment