Pending home sales, a forward-looking indicator, showed existing-home sales in the United States may ease but should stay fairly close to present levels in the months ahead, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said Tuesday. The NAR’s pending home sales index, based on contracts signed, stood at 97.7 in May, its lowest point since September 2001, down 3.5 percent from the previous month. The decline followed a 3.2 percent drop in April and a 4.5 percent dip in March.

The May figure was 13.3 percent below the reading of the same month of last year. In April, the index was 10.4 percent lower than a year earlier.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s senior economist, stressed that housing activity continues to be impacted by tighter lending criteria and a lack of buyer confidence.

“Some transactions are being postponed from mortgage market disruptions,” he said. “But better supervised lending will put housing in a fundamentally healthier state over the long term.”

The index is a leading indicator for the housing sector, based on pending sales of existing homes. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed, though the sale usually is finalized within one or two months of signing.

An index of 100 is equal to the average level of contract activity during 2001, which was the first year to be examined as well as the first of five consecutive record years for existing-home sales.

The NAR is America’s largest trade association, representing more than 1.3 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.