BOSTON (Bloomberg) — Home prices fell in half of US cities in the fourth quarter as a housing slump forced sellers to accept lower prices for their real estate, the National Association of Realtors said.The median price for a single-family home fell in 73 of 149 metropolitan areas studied by the Chicago-based real estate trade group. The national median price for a previously owned house was $219,300 in the fourth quarter, down 2.7 percent from a year earlier when the median price was $225,300, the group said in a report yesterday.

The real estate market hit a trough in the fourth quarter, capping a year that saw the first decline in sales after five record-breaking years, said David Lereah, chief economist of the trade group. Sales of previously owned homes fell to an annualised pace of 6.24 million in the final three months of 2006 and will rise through at least the second half of 2008, Lereah said.

“Hopefully the fourth quarter was the bottom for the current housing cycle,” Lereah said in the statement. He called 2006 “the year of contraction.”