By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Signed sales contracts on existing homes in the United States rose for the ninth straight month in October, a real estate industry group reported Tuesday. The pending home sales index rose a seasonally adjusted 3.7% in October from September, the National Association of Realtors reported. The index is up 31.8% compared with last October. The index rose 6% in September. The index tracks sales contracts on pre-owned homes. Typically, it takes a month or two after the contract is signed for the sale to close. At that point, the sale is booked in the NAR's existing-home sales report. The pending-home sales index has been running ahead of the existing-home sales figures, likely because tight credit conditions and tougher rules on appraisals are killing some deals before they close. Compared with a year ago, existing-home sales are up 23% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.1 million. The federal government's first-time home-buyer tax credit could have led to more deals in October. The tax credit has now been extended, but buyers in October thought it would expire on Nov. 30. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the real estate advocacy and lobbying group, 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. For 2010, the real estate agents expect sales of existing homes to rise 10.8% to 5.7 million compared with 5.15 million in 2009. New-home sales are projected 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.

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