Beginning in May of 2014, the pending sales figures for prior years were recalculated and revised in the GAAR Monthly Market Report.

Why the change?  It all has to do with the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) system.

Prior to November of 2013, the Southwest Multiple Listing Service (SWMLS) used an MLS system called Rapattoni MLS.  That system calculated pending sales in a fashion that would count a property twice if it went into a pending status more than once in a month.  This primarily occurs when a listing goes under contract for sale, the deal falls through, the listing goes back on the market, and then goes under contract for sale again later in the month.  Since a listing can only close sale once, this way of calculating pending sales created flawed results.

FlexMLS, the new MLS system utilized by SWMLS, accounts for pending sales more accurately.  There is no chance for a listing to be counted twice in the pending sales figures with the new system.  In order to compare apples to apples in the GAAR Monthly Market Report, the pending sales figures were recalculated and revised.  Any pending figures that were changed have been annotated with an asterisk (*).  There is also a footnote at the bottom of the report on any page where the pending figures were changed that explains the revised numbers.

Below are two tables showing the year over year differences in our pending calculations using the two methods of accounting for pending sales in a month.

From the tables above it is apparent that pending data from the Rapattoni MLS system was overstated.  Now that the data has been re-calculated with FlexMLS, the year over year comparisons are accurate.