NAR owns up

Star Ledger, June 14, 2008 -

"When the National Association of Realtors issued its first-quarter report on the health of the housing market last month, New Jersey was singled out as one of only three states that saw the volume of home sales increase during the first three months of the year.

On Friday, the Realtors' group issued a huge correction, saying that instead of a slight increase, New Jersey's housing market actually saw a 30 percent drop in home sales during the first quarter compared with the same period last year. "It happened in the crunching of the numbers," said NAR spokesman Lucien Salvant. "It was just a mistake and we owned up to it."

As it turns out, only 114,100 homes were sold across the state during the first quarter - nearly a third less than the 163,000 sales recorded in the first three months of 2007. "