The Rome housing market started 2013 on a slight down note with 41 single-family home sales closed in January, a decline of three from January 2012, when 44 units were sold.

The silver lining to the January report is that the average dollar figure for the January sales, $92,770, was a whopping 24 percent higher than the $74,812 figure from a year ago.

“The number of pending contracts is what was impressive to me out of those numbers,” said Jason Free of Keller Williams, president of the Greater Rome Board of Realtors.

The 63 pending contracts, signed in January but not closed, is an increase of 30 percent from the 47 contracts that were outstanding in January a year ago.

Free said he was not surprised the number of closed sales took a slight dip last month. “I was anticipating that January would be a little off, just due to the fiscal cliff and a little anxiety that might have created in the market.”

It’s a “textbook supply and demand scenario,” said Bill Temple, an agent at Toles, Temple & Wright Real Estate.

“What we’re seeing is a decrease in supply in certain price ranges because we sold so many properties last year,” he said.

Morgan Ayers, broker at Ayers Realty, said all of his agents have been very busy in recent weeks.

“We had quite a few in the $200,000 to $300,000 bracket,” Ayers said. “It’s quite exciting to see those kind of sales coming in again. We’ve been dealing with $40,000 to $60,000 for so long, with all the foreclosures.”

Temple said that fewer foreclosures is good news for people selling homes, because the huge number over the last several years has driven down prices.