I am shaking my head at this. Three years after the crash, reporters are just digging up the story that NAR, a group that promotes Realtors, the frontline salespeople for the housing industry, may have skewed the data to make the industry look better than it did. Who would have thought that the people who most depend upon consumer confidence would sugar coat their data to make people feel more confident about buying a home? I mean, besides me.
And it wasn't just me who said the industry was in trouble. Reuters reported that NAR's home sales count was overstating reality by as much as 20 percent, at least according to CoreLogic's numbers.
What does this mean for the rest of us? It could mean that S&P's estimated 4-year time line for disposing of the REO on the market is wrong. There may be a bigger backlog of unsold homes than we realize, making this climb out of the recession harder and longer.
Almost as bad as MERS handling foreclosures with faulty data. No telling yet how it affects the loan pools where MERS vaidated property owners...
ReplyDeleteExcerpt From Bloomberg News: Earnings at Bank of America, the largest U.S. lender, may suffer materially if using Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems or MERS is found to be invalid, according to a regulatory filing last week. Citigroup and PNC said fines or other penalties may result from investigations into MERS and allegations of faulty foreclosure practices...
MERS is a private database run by closely held Merscorp Inc. that tracks ownership in about half of all U.S. home mortgages. It allows banks to buy and sell loans without having to record transfers with the county, and some lenders named MERS as their agent to bring foreclosures. Consumer advocates argue that MERS records aren’t a legal substitute for traditional documents, prompting some courts to throw out foreclosures.