Realtors begin to doubt NAR statistical reports (Atlantic City, Northfield: mortgage, credit)

[kalim2008]

I guess those reports of some places in NJ starting ot get higher prices aren't necessarily true....

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Real estate agents debate local statistics (broken link)

Some doubt the numbers, even though they're from their own association, and say it's making it tougher to get home sellers to reduce their prices to more realistic levels.Kevin Dawe, a real estate agent with Balsley Losco Real Estate in Northfield, said last week's report that the median home price in the Atlantic City area rose 4.8 percent in the first quarter didn't match what he's been seeing.In particular, Dawe said the figures from the National Association of Realtors, and other information gathered from state and local Realtor groups, seemed to disagree with what the Multiple Listing Service showed.The latest positive numbers for home sales and prices have divided real estate agents, ordinarily a group uniformly upbeat about the housing market.

Breunig had a theory as to why the NAR survey shows rising prices locally that real estate agents aren't seeing. The Realtor survey tracks median home prices, the price at which half of all sales were for more, half for less. The subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent credit crunch have made it far more difficult for low-end buyers to get a mortgage, he said, which has reduced the number of low-end sales. The homes that sell are then disproportionately from the upper half of the market, artificially raising the median price. The other survey with local home prices, from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, avoids this kind of distortion by tracking price changes at particular properties. For the fourth quarter of 2007, the OFHEO survey said Atlantic City area prices fell 1 percent, even as the Realtor survey showed them rising 10.7 percent in the same period.