Monday, August 25, 2008

CAR July report??

Did anyone else see the July CAR report. They have Riverside/San Berdu with a 176% increase in sales over last year?? Huh, what kind of math is that. DataQuick already posted the numbers and their numbers indicated a 38% increase. An increase is to be expected since last year there were very few sales. But 176%? come on now, the CAR better go check those numbers. Maybe they have taken to counting trustee sales going back to the bank.

I think their number is actually a total yearly sales estimate based on current sales pace. I don't think the number they post is an actual number based solely on July sales. This approach would make things seem much better and further confuse the poor unejumacated knife catchers.

Even though sales are up if you look at the average (statewide) sales over the last 21 years the sales are WAY below the 21 year average. The average July is over 47,756 and this year it was 39,507 (about 18% below average). The CAR can try to spin the numbers any way they want. But the cold hard reality is that that sales are still low and foreclosures are still rising.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't have the exact numbers that CAR is using. However, a quick check of my MLS (which may not included all sales or match the CAR numbers used) shows that in Riverside and San Bernardino there were 4,242 homes (SFR & Condo) sold in July 2008. In July 2007 there were 1,699 sold.

Some quick math shows that as an increase of 149.68%. Doesn't match the numbers that are being provided by CAR, but they are close enough given that the datasets are probably not the same. The CAR report is providing only the percent change, not the raw numbers.

Based upon the sales volume from DQ of 7,109 (combined counties) in July 2008, that would put sales in July of 2007 at about 2575. These are rough calculations.

Since I do not have the numbers from CAR, I can only compare my calculations with theirs. Based upon this, I think the value of 176% is actually real. Remember, this is the volume of sales, not the increase in price. Prices are still declining. While sales volume is increasing, it is being offset by the increase in inventory due to foreclosures.

golfer_X said...

DataQuick's July report shows 4777 sales for July of 2007 and 6637 for July of 2008. That is an increase of 39%

Noah Moerbeek said...

Maybe they forgot a decimal point

Martin Burtin said...

I won't dirty up the blog with cut and paste statistics quotes. Go here instead: http://www.quotegarden.com/statistics.html

Martin Burtin said...

oh and btw, I just saw the headline ticker on FOX news and it said that the housing market bottomed in June. Another CAR statistic, I bet.