Washington

CONTRACTS to purchase previously owned US homes rose in May to a nine-year high, indicating recent strength in the real-estate industry will be sustained.

The pending home sales index increased 0.9 per cent to 112.6, the highest since April 2006, after a revised 2.7 per cent advance in the previous month, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Monday in Washington. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for the gauge to climb one per cent.