This morning our local newspaper, The New Haven Register, had a story entitled Home sales in state rise 4.6% over 2006. Being in the real estate business my eye catches stories of this nature. 
The media always seems to waffle with their message to the general public. How long have we heard the gloom and doom of The Real Estate Bubble? The message implied you should get out the parachute and jump before the prices crash or sit on the sidelines waiting to scoop up a bargain.
When the big price drop failed to materialize they decided to go after the volume. Claims of vast numbers of properties lingering unsold awaiting the price collapse. Today the report says January sales volume is up 11% in New Haven County and the median price dipped down 1.7%. What do you believe?
Whenever I read stories with statistics I wonder if they are accurate. Well.. of course they are, you can bend and twist numbers every which way to prove a point. Today I decided to run my own numbers to double check the facts in the paper.
Since The Cummings Team of William Raveis Real Estate is based on the Connecticut Shoreline I decided to hone in on New Haven County and see if I could duplicate the findings in the article. The first fact cited the number of homes sold in January 2007 up 11% from 2006. Hmmm... Big Jump... my sales are not up that high!
My first search of MLS data looked at single family residential sales, 412 Sold in Jan. 2007 vs. 410 in Jan. 2006. Nowhere near 11% and the median price went from $262,000 in '06 up to $266,250 this year. That is up slightly not the downturn in price the newspaper suggested.
Since my finding differed so much I assumed they must have combined Single Family Home and Condominium sales. Running those numbers the median price fell into the 230k ballpark but volume is still far from the 11% gain. My numbers showed 584 sales in January 2006 and 590 in 2007.... Hmmm... Up 1.1% Maybe they missed the decimal point.
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