April home sales up, prices down

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that home sales rose 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 4.68 million in April from a downwardly revised pace of 4.55 million in March. Sales were 4.6 percent below April last year, without adjusting for seasonal factors.

Compared with January, the lowest point in the housing recession, April sales were up nearly 4 percent. But compared with the peak in September 2005, sales are still down 35 percent.

Nationally, however, the number of unsold homes on the market at the end of April rose almost 9 percent from a month earlier to nearly 4 million. That's a 10-month supply at the current sales pace, and was particularly troubling to economists.

SOURCE: AP via Yahoo Finance