Sales of homes in Lawrence continue to slip, according to a new report from the Douglas County Appraiser’s Office.

Sales of 88 homes in Lawrence closed last month, down from 94 a year earlier.

But the average price paid for such homes continued to rise. The average for October was $201,000, up from $179,000 a year earlier.

Prices also are up for the county as a whole – $197,000, up from $177,000 a year earlier – heading into the traditionally slow winter months.

The numbers are no surprise to Mike McGrew, vice chairman of Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate in Lawrence. For months he’s watched a market function with plenty of inventory, as builders continue work on new homes while facing higher prices for land and materials.

The number of homes now on the market is up 10 percent to 15 percent from this time a year ago, he said. Homes also are staying on the market longer; on average, homes now under contract were on the market three weeks longer than they would have been a year ago.

Tim VanderPol cuts a piece of siding for a duplex at 5235 Eisenhower Terrace. New homes are sprouting up in the area northwest of Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive.

While the latest numbers suggest a “softer-than-normal seasonal slowdown,” McGrew said, the market still remains strong. It’s a buyers’ market, he said, and plenty of people should be out there to take advantage.

“If we’re going to cool off, it’s going to be a very mild cooling,” McGrew said. “The buyers have the edge, certainly, over the winter. But when springtime comes, it’s likely to be an entirely different deal.”

The county’s report comes as the National Association of Realtors reported Monday that sales of previously owned homes and condominiums nationwide fell by 2.7 percent in October, as the housing market continues to signal that the boom of the past five years is ringing more hollow these days.

The decline in sales pushed the number of unsold homes to 2.87 million, the highest level in more than 19 years, the association reported. It would take 4.9 months to deplete that inventory level at the current sales pace.

Even with the decline in sales, the national median price of an existing home sold last month rose by 16.6 percent to $218,000 compared to the median – or midpoint – price in October 2004.

“This signals that the housing sector has likely passed its peak,” said David Lereah, the association’s chief economist. “The boom is winding down to an expansion.”

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Lereah predicted that housing activity would cool even more in the coming months if, as expected, the Federal Reserve keeps pushing interest rates higher to combat rising inflation pressures triggered by a surge in energy prices.

Those price increases have contributed to a rise in mortgage rates, although rates retreated a bit last week to 6.28 percent from 6.37 percent the previous week, which had been the highest level in two years.

McGrew still thinks the Lawrence-area market is well positioned to weather any national slowdown.

“It’s been pop culture to try to talk the real estate boom down for the past several years, and I don’t know what the preoccupation with that is,” McGrew said. “Certainly, Wall Street would like to see it come down; they’d like to see more money chase stocks, rather than real estate. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, but the fact is that housing is a fundamental need. And people are buying it because they need it, not necessarily because they want it.

“You’ve got to live somewhere.”

– The Associated Press contributed information for this story.