It wasn’t at all what I expected. With accusations over the weekend by various journalists that the Realtors have been overestimating existing home sales numbers, I was ready for a full-court PR press at this morning’s monthly sales report lockup. Not so much.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun opened with, “This is going to be a fun press conference!” After detailing the usual monthly report, and carefully acknowledging a nearly 33 percentage point seasonal adjustment in sales numbers (!), Yun addressed the brewing controversy. He explained how they last “benchmarked” sales using Census figures back in 2000, but that they couldn’t do that in 2010 because the Census changed some of its survey questions. He admitted that the last revision to data in 2000 showed a 13 percent “drift,” as in the NAR’s numbers were 13 percent too high.

I won’t get into all the reasons for the “benchmark” troubles…okay, it’s really 3 reasons: 1) Consolidation of many MLS’s (multiple listing service—where Realtors list properties), so a rise in the numbers could be due to the MLS’s area getting bigger, not more sales, 2) Properties being listed on multiple MLS’s (so sales are double counted), and 3) A big drop in For Sale By Owner properties, so with more sellers using agents, there are more properties on the MLS to sell.

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