Since we are not pressured by some suit about deadlines or the quantity of our journalism, at OC180NEWS we have this thing about quality.
Of course, like anybody else, we don’t get it right 100% of the time, but there is little doubt that we dig deeper and report more complete information.

We don’t want to be too critical about other media outlets, but occasionally we feel the need to explain our reports in comparison to other articles. One comparison we consider important and illustrative is a recent OC Register real estate piece. Of course we mean the online edition. (We have heard some media outlets still use printed- tree killing paper editions, but we can’t confirm that).

The OC Register published on Nov. 19, 2011, at 8:22 a.m., a story with this headline: “Home sales dip 18% in Los Alamitos”. Since that’s a far cry from the OC180NEWS report on Los Alamitos October home sales, which by the way, was published more than two weeks before the OC Register article, we decided we would try to reconcile their numbers to our own.

As indicated in our article (see related articles below), the real estate data in our report comes from our local real estate connection, Glen Gaspar. We asked Glen to look into the strange numbers reported by the OC Register. Glen tried every imaginable combination of sorts, selection criteria, and anything else he could think of to replicate the Register’s data and could not do it.

According to the Register, there were 9 homes sold in Los Alamitos in October 2011 and 11 sold one year earlier. As far as we know, the only Los Alamitos home sold in October 2011 is the one located at 11310 Maple St. Further, our data indicates there were no homes sold in October 2010.

One possibility for the Register’s numbers is that they are based on zip code, rather than the City of Los Alamitos. Since Rossmoor and Los Alamitos share the 90720 zip code, the Register might have used that data instead of actual city data. Combining Rossmoor and Los Alamitos gets the numbers closer, but it still does not completely explain the differences.

There were 7 homes sold in Rossmoor during October 2011. If the Rossmoor sales are added to the Los Alamitos sales, it produces total October 2011 sales of 8, just one short of the 9 sales reported by the Register. Some readers might consider that close enough, but the 2010 numbers are even further apart. There were also 7 homes sold in Rossmoor during October 2010. Since no Los Alamitos homes sold during October 2010, the 7 Rossmoor homes would be the combined total. According to the Register, there were 11 homes sold in Rossmoor during October 2010, leaving an unaccounted for difference of 4 homes.

Since there were only 11 homes listed for sale in Los Alamitos as of October 15, 2011, and 9 as of November 15, 2011, it seems extremely unlikely that 9 homes were sold in Los Alamitos during October 2011. Our October Los Alamitos real estate numbers are our story, and we’re sticking to it.