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The public who follows real estate reporting, i.e. my readers, have long been amused and baffled at the overly optimistic numbers that the National Association Of Realtors has put out. Well, a new group of folks are getting annoyed at what is perceived as grandstanding by the NAR.

Actual dues paying New Jersey Realtors.

The NAR recently came out with a report saying that housing sales in the Atlantic City area are up 4.8 percent.

The problem is that those on the ground, the Realtors trying to sell homes, are not seeing it, and it is making their job much harder.

Harder you say, good news is making it harder to sell homes. Yes.

That is because the lower end is not moving due to credit issues amongst others, so when real estate agents are trying to talk sellers into realistically pricing their homes they are getting a strong pushback. The sellers are saying, “Home prices are up and you are asking me to take a cut?”

But the reality is that homes on the top end are selling, not the lower end. And it is making the Realtors unable to sell lower end homes at all, further perpetuating the trend and raising local prices even more.

With the technology available there is an answer. The NAR should break out sales data for the different segments of the marketplace and report that. Then homesellers could see what their local market is doing in both a regional perspective and a demographic perspective.

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. via NJ.com.

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1. Syracuse Realtors See Strong Market
2. Over 50% of Realtors Have Less Than 4 Years Experience
3. Silicon Valley Market Peaks, December 2005 Numbers Look Bleak
4. Florida Real Estate Shows Big Gains
5. Home Sales Booming In South Carolina