America's housing market still in rude health in September

America's housing market continued to be in rude health last month, figures from a key business lobby group showed.

Existing home sales jumped at a month-on-month pace of 9.4% in September to reach an annualised pace of 6.54m, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The median forecast form economists was for 6.2m.

"Home sales traditionally taper off toward the end of the year, but in September they surged beyond what we normally see during this season," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist.

"I would attribute this jump to record-low interest rates and an abundance of buyers in the marketplace, including buyers of vacation homes given the greater flexibility to work from home."

Prices bounded higher alongside, pushing the year-on-year rate of increase in the median cost of a second-hand home up by 15% to $311.800.

The inventory of new homes available for sale meanwhile fell to a historic low, in terms of how many months the current stock would last at the current pace of sales, falling to 2.7.

A majority of those homes available for sale, 71%, were also on the market for under a month.