INSTANT VIEW: Pending home sales rise in June

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pending sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose at a faster-than-expected pace in June, advancing for the fifth straight month for the first time in six years, a real estate trade group said on Tuesday.

KEY POINTS: * The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in June, rose 3.6 percent to 94.6. * May's index was revised upwards to 91.3 from 90.7, while the percentage increase was bumped up to 0.8 percent from 0.1 percent. * Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast pending home sales to rise 0.6 percent in June. Pending sales were up 6.7 percent in June compared to the same period last year.

COMMENTS:

DANA JOHNSON, CHIEF ECONOMIST, COMERICA, DALLAS:

"The evidence is becoming very widespread that both sales and construction activity have bottomed or are beginning to increase. The overall picture is that housing market is more balanced and won't be the drag on the economy like it has been the last few years.

"This is also important for the stabilization in the credit market. There are still concerns about mortgage-related losses and the number of home foreclosures.

"Dallas had a more restrained retrenchment in housing than other parts of the United States. There was not the overbuilding seen in other parts of the country."

FRANK GRETZ, MARKET ANALYST AND TECHNICIAN, SHIELDS & CO, NEW

YORK:

"The market is taking this as fairly good news, and as long as it does that, and as long as it ignores bad news, you have to look at it as the market wanting to go higher. The market has been overbought for some time now, but when it ignores situations where it might want to correct and go down, you have to look at it as a positive."

PIERRE ELLIS, SENIOR ECONOMIST, DECISION ECONOMICS, NEW YORK:

"More of these types of readings would encourage hopes that we're in a significant housing recovery. It's well balanced across regions. Every region is up pretty substantially from a year ago except the West.

"This is good news because we're starting to get to a level that is well above the year-ago pace. The recovery from the intervening crash is now more than complete and the chances of moving into new higher territory are greater."

MARKET REACTION: STOCKS: Dow industrials turn positive BONDS: U.S. Treasury debt prices pare gains DOLLAR: U.S. dollar pares gains versus euro, rises versus the yen