TAMPA - It's a new year, but the first month of 2008 brought a sense of dejÀ vu to anyone worried about the housing market.

Both sales and prices of existing homes continued to slide in the Tampa Bay area in January. Nationwide, sales fell to the lowest level in nearly a decade while the median home price dropped for the fifth straight month, according to data released Monday from state and national real estate associations.

"It's the same story," said Chris Lafakis, an economist who covers the Tampa Bay area for Moody's Economy.com. "Unfortunately, we have a year or more to go in home price declines."

Economists predict home prices will continue to fall locally until at least the third quarter. Moody's recently revised its prediction and now forecasts Tampa Bay area prices to drop until the fourth quarter of 2009. Previously, Moody's had predicted price stabilization in the second quarter of 2009.

"We're forecasting a 34 percent total price decline in Tampa Bay," Lafakis said. "We're only about halfway there."

The median sales price for pre-owned homes in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was $187,100 in January, a 15 percent drop from $220,100 during the same month last year, according to the Florida Association of Realtors.

The number of homes sold fell 24 percent. There were 1,235 homes sold in the Tampa metro area in January, down from 1,627 sales a year ago.

The condo market didn't fare much better. The median sales price was $159,500, a 13 percent drop from $183,600. Sales fell 12 percent to 333.

Many buyers are still on the fence, despite falling prices. When buyers do decide to make a purchase, some don't qualify as easily now as they did during the housing boom. That's because, economists say, lenders have tightened credit standards.

The numbers may be bad, but Deborah Farmer, president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, said there have been improvements in the local market.

"Anecdotally, we're starting to see a surge in business," she said.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of single-family homes and condominiums dropped by 0.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units, the slowest sales pace on record going back to 1999.

The median price of a home sold in January slid to $201,100, a drop of 4.6 percent from a year ago.

Sales were weak in all parts of the country except the Midwest, where sales posted an increase of 3.4 percent. Sales dropped by 3.6 percent in the Northeast, 2.1 percent in the West and 0.5 percent in the South.

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, said he thinks the housing market may be on the verge of bottoming out with a rebound expected to start toward the end of this year.

"Subprime loans and other risky mortgage products have virtually disappeared from the marketplace, and over the past five months, this has been reflected in soft but fairly stable home sales," he said.

Yun said he expected demand to be bolstered in coming months by congressional action on the economic stimulus bill to raise the caps on the size of loans that can be backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

Other economists were not as optimistic, noting a huge overhang of unsold homes, which rose in January to a 10.3-month supply, meaning it would take that long to exhaust existing inventories. That is about double the inventory during the boom.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at (813) 259-7804 or sbehnken@tampatrib.com.