There has been a lot of confusion between ASU's April monthly sales report and one released by ARMLS on Monday according to a recent Arizona Republic article.  The report, compiled each month on home-resale transactions in Maricopa County, reported that home resales were up 15 percent compared with the same month in 2007, the first year-over-year increase since July 2005.

That conflicts with a report released by the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service indicating a 12 percent decrease in home sales in the same period. The reason is ASU's report does not differentiate between "trustee sales," in which banks take over properties from borrowers in default, and routine home resales. More than one-third of the sales reported for April, or 2,025 of the 5,585 total, were trustee sales. The listing service includes new-home sales, some pending-sale transactions and sales in certain areas of Pinal County. But since January, ASU has been painting a rosier picture, reporting higher sales figures than the listing service for each of the year's first three months.

ASU agrees that trustee sales should not be lumped in with routine resales and would be reported separately from now on.

See http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0520biz-homesales0520.html