The trade group will issue revisions on sales and unsold inventory figures, percentage changes are expected to hold steady, and neither the group's estimate of months it would take to exhaust supply, nor its estimates of median sales prices, will be revised. Earlier this year, a number of independent analysts began questioning the NAR's methods for calculating home sales. CoreLogic, for example, conducted a study in which it tracked sales through court records, and couldn't find as many home sales as the NAR was reporting.
The NAR cited several factors for its over-estimating of home sales, but blamed the errors chiefly on the consolidation of the regional and local home listing services from whom it gets its data. Known as multiple listing services, or MLS, some of these services have merged together in recent years. In addition, MLS services have been established for smaller communities that had previously been covered by an MLS service from a larger area, leading to many homes sold being counted twice.
The NAR revision is not an anomaly, as the group typically produces revisions once a decade based on data obtained through the US Census, but the 2010 survey did not include any questions about home purchases, so the group's revisions for 2001-2010 have been delayed while the group found another way to calculate home sales for the decade. According to the initially announced figures, there were 4.9 million existing homes sold last year, the lowest total since 1997. After next week's revised figures, the year's sales totals will look even worse.
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