Foreclosure stats in Journal story were flawed
One in 717 county households faces foreclosure
In the July 15 story "Hurting at Home," the Journal cited a statistic from RealtyTrac stating that in March one in 26 households faced foreclosure. However, when compared with recently released May statistics, the March figure appeared abnormal.
RealtyTrac now acknowledges it should have reported that one in every 717 households in the county was facing foreclosure.Shawn Kelsey, general manager of The Kelsey Group real estate firm, first raised concerns to the Journal about the statistic.
In order for the one-in-26 figure to be accurate, about 3,800 households would have faced foreclosure in March. However, RealtyTrac reported that 147 households faced foreclosure that month.
On Friday afternoon, an official with RealtyTrac said the company miscalculated the total number of households in the county in its March report.
Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac vice president of marketing, said the company had one similar incident nine months ago for a small county in Washington state.
"After that error, we implemented manual checking of the numbers," Sharga said. "Now, I'm going to work with our technology side to implement a technological safeguard against such large variance in our statistics because the (manual) checker missed (this error)."
Sharga said the error was likely due to the fact that the company focuses mostly on national and state numbers. Sharga also apologized to the Journal for his company's error.
RealtyTrac often has been cited and relied upon by such media outlets as CNNMoney.com, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Seattle Times. Additionally, the company was selected to supply foreclosure data to the Wall Street Journal's Real Estate Journal, MSN Real Estate and Yahoo! Real Estate.
Due to RealtyTrac's record as a source for some of the most respected publications in the nation, the Journal relied upon that company's statistics. The Journal now regrets doing so.
But concerns reach far beyond the July 15 story in the Journal.
Questions also have been raised about RealtyTrac's counting methods. The company has said that though it stands by its historical numbers, it has revised its methods.
Congress also has used statistics from the company in its discussions about the increase in foreclosures nationwide.
