CAR Revises San Diego Real Estate Sales Due to MLS Glitch
CAR Revises San Diego Real Estate Sales Numbers Due to MLS Data Glitch
This blog post is in reference to an article in the Wall Street Journal by James R. Hagerty. The WSJ reported that:
“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. 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. The California Realtors have reported that San Diego sales in April were up about 63% from a year earlier. Mr. Kleinhenz said that is expected to be revised downward to a gain of about 20%. For May, the group reported an 89% increase in sales in San Diego; that will be slashed to about 6.5%, the economist said. As a result, he said, the state-wide sales gain for May — reported last week as 35% — also will be revised down, though it probably will remain above 30%, Mr. Kleinhenz said.”
I use the San Diego MLS as a Realtor in San Diego. There have been some changes to it over the past year and just recently. Fields have been added and things have been changed around. It took Listingbook quite a while to finally come into San Diego as a tool for agents and their buyers and sellers to view real estate for sale in the MLS. It has been frustrating for me as well because the IDX solution for my San Diego real estate web site has been changed several times because of the adjustments in the San Diego MLS. This has also made many of my search links invalid and error codes pop up when clients do searches with prior created links. It has forced me to remove the links. I also understand that the MLS not only in San Diego but other areas of the country change from time to time and will always have to be modified with new fields and updates. It is a part of technology and changing times.
The old adage “GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out” – doesn’t apply either because it wasn’t “Garbage In” it was just “Garbage Out”. Because of the Changes in the MLS I can see how the sales calculations can be different from what they were in the past because of the added fields that are now in play. I’m glad the mistake was caught and I’m sure more caution will be used in the future when doing these calculations. It can also affect the Median Home Price data as well. If fields change and new categories are created someone with an understanding of all this needs to be overseeing the operation to make sure the reporting is correct. DataQuick got it right ….. Why not hire them.
Wall Street Journal Article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124638992043975185.html
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