Enticed by tumbling housing prices, more Americans signed contracts to buy homes in December despite concerns about the economy, an industry group reported on Tuesday.
The National Association of Realtors said that pending home sales rose 6.3 percent in December from a month earlier, with strong gains in the South and Midwest. The number of pending home sales — those in which a buyer has signed a contract but not closed — were up 2.1 percent from December 2007.
But economists cautioned that December could prove to be nothing more than a bump in real estate’s long slide.
“They rebounded from an all-time low, so the level is still low,” said Patrick Newport, United States economist at IHS Global Insight.
The number of pending sales for 2008 was down 9.5 percent from 2007 — a sign of the toll that the tight credit markets had inflicted on the flagging housing market. The Commerce Department reported that new-home sales in December fell to an annual rate of 331,000, their lowest point on record.
The median home price in December was $175,400, down more than 15 percent from $207,000 in December 2007 and at its lowest point since May of 2003, the National Association of Realtors reported.
