San Diego’s False Starts
San Diego residential real estate had an astonishing April and May in the teeth of the worst housing recession in at least three generations. Believe that and we’ll tell you another one.
Actually, when the numbers are accurately tallied, San Diego residential real estate had a pretty good April, up 20% from the same month in 2008, and a moderately good May, up 6.5%.
That’s not 63% better than April 2008, which is what the California Association of Realtors originally reported. And a 6.5% lift in May is no where near the 89% mega quantum leap the association crowed about a month ago.
If it’s their job to count the stuff right, why can’t they do their job? You’d think they were trying to pull one over on people. Fortunately, real estate economist Tom Lawler caught the, ahem, error of CAR’s ways.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The California Association of Realtors expects to make sharp downward revisions in its recent monthly reports of soaring home sales in the San Diego area, Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist of the trade group, said in an interview. Those revisions will mean modest downward revisions in statewide sales, he added.
The revisions are likely to be announced in late July, when
the Realtor group reports home sales for June. The problem resulted from a glitch in data from a multiple-listing service in San Diego, Mr. Kleinhenz said. He said a change in computer systems used there resulted in incorrect data being sent to the Realtor association over the past year or so.Thomas Lawler, an independent economist in Leesburg, Va., who tracks home sales nationwide, raised questions about the San Diego data in a report last week. Mr. Lawler noted that the numbers reported by the Realtors vastly exceeded those from MDA DataQuick, a research firm in La Jolla, Calif., and other sources.
Nothing like needing to sharply, downwardly revise published data to cultivate trust in an already wary market.
Comments
One Response to “San Diego’s False Starts”
Leave a Reply
It is very important to look at all available information about home sales, prices, listings, etc. The best thing would be for the NAR to work with all local MLS to make all data available to the public. It might put me out of a job, but…that’s ok, if the result is a better, more informed public and better, more informed policymakers.
Tom Lawler
Lawler Economic & Housing Consulting