The fact of the matter is that the MLS is the single most regulated and reliable posting vehicle for real estate sales in the county. Of course it does not cover FSBOs and new home sales but it does give me a reliable and easy to use mechanism to track the market performance and allow me to analyze data to make future predictions.
If you can show me ANY other source of regulated data out there that gives me ANY CLUE of what is really out there then I will gladly use it. Give me something, ANYTHING that I can use.
Similarly the MLS is what we have now, it is what I use now, what I have used in the past, what I can compare present numbers to past numbers to, what I can use to analyze trends, to compare pricing and market times to… It is ALL I have that I trust.
The thing is that everyone here can choose to trust whatever data sources they want to choose. My read on this market has nothing to do with what Mr Mortgage says (I am not saying he is right or wrong but I don’t use his analysis or sources of data), or that I see for sales signs that are not on the MLS yet. Believe me I actually DO call the listing agent to find out why they are not yet. My read is not based on a conspiracy that banks are holding out inventory in Carmel Valley and not listing them. Are banks holding out inventory? Probably so but not to the extent that people think they are and certainly not in as many zip codes as many here imply.
So I do most all of my data mining using the MLS. As an engineer 100% of my analysis is based on data I find. So… to me the MLS is the best monitored and regulated source there is. It is the interpretation of the data that takes skill. Just because the numbers do or do not do something doesn’t mean the depreciation cycle is over. Unfortunately schizo may be intepreting them differently but I think marking a change in them is worth seeing. Like anything else regarding long secular trends, once they are over you can look back at various data points to identify different phases of the trend.
Anyways, not sure if I answered your question. To most people it may not be an important piece of data at all because they don’t use it. Yet when the MLS showed record high numbers it is happily used by everyone. When it shows a breakdown in the listed inventory, it is tossed aside. In reality the breakdown in listed inventory is perfectly explainable and should be noted but by no means does it mean a breakdown in the secular trend.
