by Calculated Risk on 7/11/2011 10:58:00 PM

• From Nick Timiraos at the WSJ: U.S. Tackles Housing Slump

The Obama administration is ramping up talks on how to revive the housing market ... Policy ideas include having taxpayer-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac relax their rules for loans to investors, allowing those buyers to vacuum up excess housing inventory. In certain markets, Fannie and Freddie could hold some foreclosed homes off the market and rent them out ... Officials also could sweeten incentives for banks to reduce loan balances for borrowers who are underwater ...

I'll have some thoughts on this later this week, but some of these proposals (like converting some owners to renters) make sense.

• From Mary Ellen Podmolik at the Chicago Tribune: Realty trade group overreported Chicago home prices (ht Eric, Austin, Peter)

The Illinois Association of Realtors dramatically overreported the median price of condominiums sold within the city of Chicago in May, with the price tumbling 23 percent year-over-year, not rising 10.3 percent as the trade group said.

The state Realtors' group acknowledged the error after the Tribune, acting on a tip, questioned the accuracy of the data.

A key sentence was at the bottom of the story:

In February, questions arose about the accuracy of home sales data as reported monthly by the National Association of Realtors, and whether the trade group had been overestimating the volume of existing home sales since 2007.

Possibly as soon as August, the national group will issue revised- and revised downward - national home sales numbers going back at least three years.

So we might get the revisions in August (Note: I broke this story about the revisions in January, not February).