A couple of years ago, one of the employees at RealtyTrac told me that they get their data from multiple sources, and they don’t have time to cross-reference or screen out any duplicates. Hat tip to Rob for sending this along – we’ve been hearing about how the NAR has been over-stating sales, here’s a guy who is comparing RealtyTrac’s numbers to the loacl county’s data. The result? It looks like RealtyTrac is reporting 3x the actual foreclosures last year in his county:
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Excellent. I do like his concluding remarks that since everyone is using RealtyTrac data and it appears to be flawed data, it is likely that incorrect decisions will be made (the decisions that require an accurate assessment of the number of foreclosures).
If I were a paying consumer of RealtyTrac’s data I would demand a refund or a public retraction like good news organizations do.