Home prices are enduring an early winter chill, raising the odds that the economy may suffer another jolt while it is still weak.
Model homes in the Las Vegas, where prices for homes have declined for 37 months and are down more than half from their peak.
Two price indexes released Tuesday indicated that the momentum the housing market showed over the late spring and summer is faltering, even as the government said the economy grew at a slower pace in the third quarter than previously reported.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, a closely watched measure of the housing markets in 20 metropolitan areas, barely rose in September, rising 0.3 percent from August on a seasonally adjusted basis. Prices fell for the month in nine cities in the index, including Boston, New York, Seattle and Charlotte, N.C.
A report from the Federal Housing Financing Agency showed that prices were flat in September from August.
Real estate, which has traditionally brought the economy out of recession, seems increasingly likely this time to hold it back. The housing market’s epic boom early this decade has turned into an epic bust whose effects may take years to shake off.
The housing market is confronting an abundance of inventory, high unemployment, fearful consumers and devastated family balance sheets.
“There is no clear, easy way out for housing,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “Contrary to my hopes, housing prices and the housing market in general will weaken again.”
He forecast a new decline in prices of as much as 10 percent, which he expected to shave a half-point off the nation’s economic output just as it emerges from the recession.
In its report on Tuesday, the Commerce Department said the economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the third quarter, down from the 3.5 percent rate reported last month.
The revised number, based on more complete data, was in line with analyst expectations. It was larger than the typical adjustment, underscoring the erratic nature of the recovery. But although growth was slower, the third quarter ended the longest economic contraction since World War II, with the economy expanding for the first time in a year.
Little of this recovery is reflected in housing prices, which are limping despite improved sales volume.
The Case-Shiller index, which covers about 45 percent of the United States housing market, is a three-month moving average. Since July and August were relatively strong, the weak September report could indicate a plunge in prices.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency uses data from the government mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which until recently were limited to loans below $417,000. Its index tends to swing less widely than Case-Shiller.
The two housing price reports lag, by a month, the figures on the volume of home resales, which were issued Monday for October. Home resales jumped 10.1 percent to the highest level in two years, better than analysts had expected.
Much of the increase was attributed to the $8,000 first-time buyer’s tax credit, which had been set to expire Nov. 30 but has been renewed through spring. Buyers who have already owned a home are now eligible for a $6,500 credit.
While brisk sales volume should, in theory, push up prices, Maureen Maitland, the vice president for index services at S.& P., said the oversupply of inventory was acting as a brake. “You can look down the street and have 10 houses to choose from,” she said.
About 3.57 million used homes are for sale, a number that has been declining but is still higher than the historic average. It represents seven months of inventory at the current sales rate.
Ms. Maitland speculated that the housing market might follow a “W” pattern, as the price lows plumbed last spring are tested again this winter.
“There is going to be more moderation and downturn in the coming months,” she said.
While that might be good for prospective buyers, it would put more stress on would-be sellers and everyone who looks to his or her house to measure net worth and ability to spend.
Consumers are much poorer than they were, and are acting accordingly. Consumer spending in the third quarter increased 2.9 percent, less than the 3.4 percent originally reported.
That number worried some economists, who said it was below healthy margins and even lower than growth levels in 1983, when joblessness was as high. Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of the economy.
Julia Coronado, senior United States economist at BNP Paribas, said the revised figures suggested economic renewal would be mild indeed.
“It’s going to be a very gradual pace of recovering instead of a roaring return to business as usual,” she said. “The G.D.P. number highlights this recovery is different from prior recoveries.”
Also released Tuesday was the S.& P./Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. That index covers a broader segment of the market, about 75 percent, but is released quarterly, rather than monthly.
The national index showed an 8.9 percent decline in the third quarter of 2009 from the third quarter of 2008, a substantial improvement over the 14.7 percent decline in the annual rate of return in the second quarter of 2009.
Despite such improvements, it will be a long time under the most favorable circumstances before housing recovers what it lost. The 20-city composite index is off nearly 10 percent in the last year and 29.1 percent since its 2006 peak.
Prices in Las Vegas have declined for 37 months and are down more than half from their peak. At the other extreme is Dallas, which did not have much of a boom and thus did not have so far to fall. Prices there are only down about 5 percent.
Florida has been ravaged almost as much as Las Vegas. About a quarter of its homeowners with mortgages are late with payments. But even there, some people are still buying.
“They’re not buying as investors, they’re buying as homeowners,” said Grant Stern of Morningside Mortgage Corporation in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., near Miami Beach. “Nobody expects a 50 percent gain. Flat is the new up.”
One of Mr. Stern’s clients is Howard Roth, who recently moved to Florida from Oakland, Calif., where he lived in an apartment. He closed on a house in Boca Raton on Monday.
“I wanted a dog, and a yard for a dog,” Mr. Roth, a 61-year-old retiree, said. The turmoil in the market did not faze him.
“America always bounces back,” he said. “Somebody’s got to make a move.”
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