US Housing Data Wrong Again?

Article Submitted by: IamAnInvestor
The Economy


US Housing Date Could Wrong

 

Submitted: Feb 7, 2008    Views: 168    Comments: 1    Likes: 1   


US Housing Data Wrong Again? Could Be 4.5% Increase In Sales For December

soldOnce again we are showing what could be a vastly different number for home sales than what the NAR or National Associate of Realtors just released for December Home Sales according to Bloomberg. My spot number shows that there appears to be as much as a 4.5% increase in homes sales from November to December rather than the stated 1.5% decline in home sales.

If you go back to my other article about how the data is pulled by the NAR, they only use homes that are listed with Real Estate Agents and not those that are sold privately, and as I showed you using data from the Franklin County Ohio Auditor’s own conveyance numbers this number is off by several factors.

For December, if we just use the non-exempt conveyance numbers from the Auditor, there was an actual increase of about 4.5 percent of properties from November, 2007 to December, 2007.

While this is a small sample, this point out what I think is a flawed data presented by the NAR and yet it is used by almost all of the major news outlets. How long this will go on without anyone else besides me and you knowing about it, who knows, but in the meantime, use it to your advantage.

The real story here may be the numbers for January, it appears that there was an 18.8% drop in sales for the month of January, 2008 as compared to December, 2007. I am not sure what the seasonal adjustment should be but, that number does seem very large indeed. I want to see how February is fairing before I offer any opinions.




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Comments Received:

Sam Cass
Sam_Cass

I have a friend who runs a lumber yard. I asked him how sales were doing. He looked at me and said: "Are you kidding? It's a catastrophe." I'll have to look at your numbers more closely but the construction of new homes is taking a beating, presumably because no one is buying what's already out there.

Posted: Feb 7, 2008



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