So far this year the late reporters have been adding another 10% or so onto the totals after the last day of the month. If we had ~1150 sales on December 31, 2007 that tells me that adding another 170 sales on top of that – which is what I did – is giving the opposing viewpoint the benefit of the doubt.
I’m operating off the assumption that the percentage of sales transactions that didn’t go through the MLS in 1996 is similar to that of 2007. Perhaps that assumption isn’t entirely valid but it’s not completely invalid, either.
As for patting myself on the back, that’s not true at all. I was wrong about how bad this year would be. As it turns out, I was a too optimistic by a fair bit.