Tucson MLS Under Reporting Closed Sales by 7% Through November 2007
I’ve just posted the following information over at our Tucson Real Estate in The News blog. I know some of you read both but for those readers who only come here I wanted you to be apprised of this information as well.
The Bird of Paradise is a flower for good new. Okay, I made that up. But I wanted to share it with all of you. I took this at The Wild Animal Park in San Diego last week. I could say something about “May the Bird of Paradise . . .” but I’ll resist the urge.
Every month I notice there are more closed transactions than are being reported in the Tucson MLS Statistical Reports. There is a cut off date each month when they pull the data. Unfortunately there are some brokerages that don’t get their sales entered in a timely manner which then skews the data. On any individual month it might not be significant but added together it can paint a different picture of the actual state of the Tucson real estate market.
I went back to January 2007 and pulled the current count for each month of closed transactions. Jan - April I pulled for all areas to compare apples to apples. In May the Tucson MLS limited the reporting data to just the Tucson Areas which I have said on numerous occasions is how it should have been reported all along. Therefore, this was a good decision but they did not go back and account for this limiting of areas when comparing 2006 numbers to 2007. This resulted in some indicators looking better than they should and some worse. But it doesn’t balance out in the end.
So we end up with a catch in the data between when the data is pulled for the reports and subsequent additions of closed sales after that date. Once those sales are entered into the MLS data there is no mechanism for including these sales in the reporting data. They just don’t exist as far as the reporting is concerned. The numbers reported in the monthly statistical report are picked up by the media as the “actual” numbers of transactions.
It will be awhile before the totals for December 2007 are reported and then the last of those sales could be three months or more being entered into the Tucson MLS system. Since the media is hitting this whole issue of the Housing Market strong I thought it would be a good idea to shed some positive light on the issue that I’m sure even the Tucson MLS isn’t going to be reporting and possible isn’t even aware of these sales slipping through the reporting crack.
Here are the numbers:
|
Month
|
Reported
|
Actual
|
Difference
|
| January |
941
|
983
|
42
|
| February |
993
|
1037
|
44
|
| March |
1318
|
1375
|
57
|
| April |
1287
|
1371
|
84
|
| May |
1313
|
1411
|
98
|
| June |
1226
|
1372
|
146
|
| July |
1098
|
1181
|
83
|
| August |
1019
|
1080
|
61
|
| September |
683
|
762
|
79
|
| October |
790
|
870
|
80
|
| November |
759
|
794
|
35
|
| Total |
11,426
|
12,236
|
810
|
There are 810 sales representing 7% of the total sales for Tucson entered into the MLS which are not showing up in the statistics reports. This is through the first 11 months. Just this morning from data pulled last night there were 3 more closed sales entered for November.
Once all the numbers are entered sometime around the end of the first quarter of 2008 it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility this could reach 1000 closed transactions not reported or accounted for anywhere.
This past week we have been told that a 6.9 % decrease in New Home Sales is a Plunge, Slump, Decline, Then how should a 7% increase in reported sales be described? I’ll let you decide.
Technorati Tags: tucson az real estate market, Tucson MLS 7% Close Transactions Unreported, Tucson MLS Statistics Report[where: 85737]
Dave Smith | Tucson Real Estate News
Interesting find Dave! So does that mean the ‘plunge’ was no change? (-6.9 + 7 = +0.1)?
I just love that photo