WASHINGTON — Homeowners and investors hunting for any indication that the housing market has bottomed out didn't get it yesterday, as the latest home sales data from a real estate trade group moved that sign farther down the road to recovery.

The National Association of Realtors said pending U.S. home sales fell in February to the lowest reading since the index began in 2001. The trade group's seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes fell to 84.6 from January's upwardly revised reading of 86.2. A year earlier, the index stood at 107.6.

A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales when the index started. The previous low was August's 85.8, recorded at the height of the credit crunch.

With house prices falling and credit continuing to tighten, many economists say the housing market is likely to worsen in the coming months, though some remain hopeful about a recovery in the second half of the year.

"The question was whether things were starting to stabilize," said Global Insight economist Patrick Newport. "Apparently they're not."

Newport predicts home sales will fall by another 5 to 10 percent before picking up at the end of the year, while the Realtors' group forecasts flat sales in the first half of the year before a rebound in the second half.

The Realtors' report gives an early indication of how existing home sales fared in March, because of the typical lag of a month or two between when the signing of a home sales contract and the closing of the deal.

Moody's www.Economy.com forecasts sales of existing homes will show a fall of 1.6 percent in March to an annual rate of 4.95 million units, down from 5.03 million units in February.

That month's 2.9 percent increase in home sales was the first increase since last July.

"Despite recent steps to provide more liquidity to the mortgage market and ease financing constraints for potential buyers, access to credit remains restricted, especially for marginal buyers," Aaron Smith, senior economist at www.Economy.com, wrote. If job losses prove worse than expected as the economy slows, "the floor forming under home sales could begin to cave in."

Lawrence Yun, the Realtors' chief economist, said in a statement that the pending home sales dip "implies we're not out of the woods yet, though an era of successive deep sales declines appears to be over."

Some analysts say lower home prices are luring bottom-fishers looking for cheap deals — not a guaranteed industry booster, especially as tighter lending causes deals to fall through.