HMM: Decline in real estate sales greater than stated? “Statistics published by the National Association of Realtors appear to overstate sales of existing home by 15 to 20 percent, mortgage and property data aggregator CoreLogic says in a new report that concludes home sales fell more sharply last year than previously thought.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

You have a post up about possibly mis-leading real estate sales figures.

I work for an appraiser. And while we’re just one office among many in Orlando, we track our numbers.

January 2010 we performed 59 appraisals
January 2011 we performed 39 appraisals

Of course, not all of those are sales. Very few are refinances. Many of those are REO appraisals.

If I have time later today, I’ll go through and run numbers for 2009 month-by-month to do a better comparison. But January 2011 felt really, really dead to us. Even though it’s a slow month as a rule. (I did an end of month tally for all of 2010, but didn’t do that in 09.)

In a followup email, this: “Jan. 2009 was 50 appraisals.”