By Alan Zibel and Jeff Bater

U.S. home sales from 2007 through 2010 were about 14% lower than first reported, a real estate trade group said Wednesday, a sharp revision showing the housing bust was far worse than initially thought.

Associated Press

The National Association of Realtors revised downward its sales figures since 2007, using annual Census survey data to recalculate how many homes were sold.

Sales for all of 2011 are on track to hit around 4.25 million, up slightly from last year’s level of 4.19 million, which was revised downward 15%, said Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ group’s top economist.

The Realtors’ new figures also show 2008 was the worst year for home sales during the housing bust, with only 4.11 million sold, down 16% from the previous estimate of 4.91 million.

Home sales for the first 10 months of this year were also revised downward. October’s sales pace was lowered to a rate of about 4.25 million sales per year, from an original estimate, from an original level of 4.97 million.

Yun cited several reasons for the group’s sales revisions. The group’s reports were “not matching up with other housing-related data,” he said.

The Realtors group, he said, was overcompensating for sales that were not recorded through the regional and local real estate listing services from which the group gets its data. Those “multiple-listing services” have consolidated in recent years, giving them more coverage of local housing markets.

Other factors leading to the downward revision included a decline in “for sale by owner” transactions that were completed without a real estate agent, some new-home sales also being reported by real estate listing services and some sales being reported on more than one listing service.

The group typically produces revisions of home-sales data at the end of every decade based on the latest census survey data.

But because the 2010 Census didn’t ask U.S. residents about home sales, NAR relied on an annual survey conducted by the Census to calculate the revisions.

In the future, Yun said the group would calculate the revisions annually.