Realtors sold 3,049 homes during the month, a 9.2 percent increase over last January.
Activity has been improving as supply declines and demand for homes ticks up, property agents say.
Pending sales at the end of January totaled 3,164. That’s up 6 percent from last year and suggests another positive month of sales when the February figures are tallied.
Foreclosure sales also took a big turn up in January. Distressed property sales rose 22 percent, representing 27.8 percent of the transactions in January.
“The January report shows continued strength in the Houston housing market that we began seeing in the latter part of 2011, and it gives us cause for optimism as we look ahead to the traditionally active spring and summer buying months,” Wayne Stroman, the association’s chairman, said in a news release. “We have also seen more jobs being filled locally and you don’t typically experience a strong real estate market without healthy employment.”
Prices have remained relatively flat.
January’s single-family home median price — the figure at which half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less — rose inched up 0.9 percent year-over-year to $139,900.
The number of available properties, or active listings, at the end of January declined 15.1 percent from January 2011 to 42,067. The inventory of single-family homes dropped to its lowest level since December 2009 — 5.7 months, compared to 7.2 months one year earlier. That means it would take 5.7 months to sell all the single-family homes on the market based on sales activity over the past year.
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