New single-family home sales snagged a September updraft to crest at their highest perch in nearly half a year, but remain below sales seen during the same period last year.

The Commerce Department reported that new residential home sales ticked up to an annual rate of 313,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, reflecting a 5.7-percent revision above the 296,000-unit rate from August.

The median sales price for a new house sold over September came out to $204,400, with the average for the same cresting at $243,900.

Regionally, the South saw home sales rise again, climbing above a seasonally adjusted rate 161,000 to hit 179,000. Numbers in the West stopped short of stealing the show but moved a few notches above annual estimates from the previous month. The Midwest and Northeast meanwhile felt the most trouble for their home sales numbers over last month.

Analysts commenting on the new home sales numbers framed even the September uptick as unpromising given the historically weak housing market.

“The September headline estimate was not statistically significant,” Patrick Newport, U.S. economist with IHS Global Insight, wrote in a widely circulated note, adding that the new home sales numbers suggest “[t]his is shaping up to be the worst year for housing on record for the single-family housing market.”

He cited low job growth, still-tight credit, and a foreclosure glut as reasons for home-sales annual rates from the five quarters, which he dubbed “the five lowest quarterly readings on record” since 1963.

Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with consultancy Capital Economics, differed by calling “the excess supply in the market for new homes… nowhere near as bad as it was a couple of years ago.”

Even so, he said, still-low home sales figures correspond with a bottom seen at the time of the expiration of the federal homebuyer tax credit, and bank-owned properties persist in creating problems for homebuilders.

“Eventually we would expect to see new home sales and construction rebound, simply because both are lagging behind the growth in the population,” he wrote, adding that a “turnaround in new home sales and construction may still be a couple of years away.”

The final word for home sales figures that churned up otherwise positive headlines?

Wrote Newport: “Bottom line: Conditions in this market are really bad.”