Pending home sales rise for 9th month in a row

The pending home sales index rose a seasonally adjusted 3.7% in October from September, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. The index is up 31.8% compared with last October. The index rose 6% in September.

Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for NAR, said the increase in pending home sales wasn’t entirely due to the tax credit.

“Based on the demographics of our growing population, existing-home sales should be in the range of 5.5 million to 6.0 million annually,” he said.

NAR projects 2010 existing homes sales to rise 10.8% to 5.7 million compared with 5.15 million in 2009. New-home sales are forcasted to rise 42% in 2010 to 561,000 from 394,000 in 2009. Home prices are expected to rise about 4%, according to Yun’s forecast