For one, they note the easy comparison to September 2007's sales, which were dismal in the wake of the credit crunch that started just months before, drying up lending for all but traditional conforming loans at $417,000 or below.

In California alone, that caused some 30 percent of real-estate contracts to fall through, according to the National Association of Realtors.

As the financial crisis has spread and deepened in recent weeks, it has also cast doubt on a budding housing recovery.

"We're headed toward a very serious recession, maybe one of the worst ones since at least the '80s, and when people lose their jobs, when there isn't job growth, people don't move around, so homes don't sell as much," said Patrick Newport economist at IHS Global Insight. "These numbers are for September, so they don't reflect what happened in October, when the market really started to freeze up."

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