How many people did NAR survey?
I thought I had found an answer when I read the quote from a Freakonomics reader:
“I talked to the author of this study at the National Association of Realtors and it was based on a survey return from 155,000 mailings. The returns totalled 7400. The criteria was a sold, single famiy, detached home in the suburbs.”
But then I came across this comment on none other then the New York Times blog:
“NAR surveyed 108,000 people who had sold their homes, got about 3,700 responses, and compiled the results.”
Now I am confused.
So I went to the NAR website to try to dig up some more information on what really happened, and I found this file on the highlights of the survey. It says:
“In August 2005, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® mailed an 8-page questionnaire to 90,000 consumers who bought a home between August 2004 and July 2005. Information on sellers comes from those buyers who also sold a home. Hurricane Katrina disrupted mail service in late August 2005 in some areas of the country and artificially depressed the response rate to the survey. Consequently, the questionnaire was re-fielded to an additional 55,000 homebuyers in selected areas. All told, the survey yielded 7,813 usable responses yielding a response rate of 5.4 percent. Consumer names and addresses were obtained from Experian, a firm that maintains an extensive database of recent home buyers derived from county records.”
So according the survey’s author, neither of the above comments were correct. It sounds like there were 145,000 surveys mailed, and 7,813 usable responses. Of course, that still doesn’t explain how they calculated their different prices for FSBO and realtor assisted home purchases?