and you can read numerous articles about the National Association of Realtors big mistake. Existing home sales numbers, released monthly, will be revised down for the past five years on Dec 21st.
Chief economist Lawrence Yun said the database NAR uses to track existing home sales, the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), has led the real estate agency to over-count existing home sales. The MLS database only includes home sales listed by realtors, and excludes homes listed by owners, providing a very narrow view of the market. And because people are using realtors to list their homes instead of selling them independently, realtor-listed sales numbers have become artificially inflated, said Yun.