My read is that the more educated the person is that is being interviewed, the more educated his answer should be. If he really doesn’t know then he should say that. What irks me is that someone of that degree should have the insight to say that the presentation of the data is what is particularly poor. That the data needs to be organized in a manner that is germaine to real estate.
My suggestions for at least a start:
1 – Organize it by zip codes and by sizes of homes.
2 – Segregate condos and SFRs.
3 – Throw out the highs and lows of the sample sets.
4 – If possible try to identify if the sale was of an owner occupied home or not.
5 – If possible try to identify if the buyer is purchasing it as a rental or not.
6 – Report cancelled, expireds and withdrawns for each category above.
As we have all seen, the way that the statistics are presented one can argue any way they want.
Most of us who argue in favor of a declining market do so based on other stats rather then the median.