Planet PLG has an axe to grind with the Times’ weekly Residential Sales Around the Region feature, which the blogger says is frequently a hotbed of misinformation that makes the local market appear far rosier than it actually is. His case in point is the sales info listed this Sunday for former Brownstoner House of the Day 60 De Koven Court:

The property, according to the Times, was listed at $1.35 million and had been on the market for 13 weeks, which would mean it went on the market sometime in late April (the actual closing date is listed as being July 20) and sold for about 94% of asking. Both of these pieces of information are wrong. For one thing, by the time it sold, the house was actually listed at $1.310 million, as the website of Mary Kay Gallagher, the property’s broker, shows. What’s more, that 13 weeks on the market is off…by about 200 percent, as a quick perusal of the Times’s own archives will show you: the paper featured that exact same house in its “On the Market” feature on November 12 (which, for those keeping score, is approximately 38 weeks ago) for $1.6 million (which, for those of you still keeping track, means it only sold for about 80 percent of its initial asking price).

The post also notes that Brownstoner readers pretty much nailed the property’s value at $1.3 million half a year earlier. As regular readers will know, this is hardly the first time that the Times sales reports have been misleading. As we recall, the rationalization is that the Times only counts the time on the market from the most recent price adjustment. Is there a vast conspiracy afoot at the ol’ Gray Lady to make brokers look good?
The Times Ignores its Own Clips in Favor of Cheerleading [Planet PLG]
Residential Sales Around the Region [NY Times]
HOTD: The Common Courtesy of a Wrap-Around [Brownstoner]