No major surprises in the New Home Sales index for April. Sales of single-family houses saw a 0.3% advance to an annual pace of 352,000 in April, according to the Census Bureau on Thursday.

The gain is minor, but some believe the housing market has shown signs of stabilization recently.

“Unit new home sales continue to show signs of bottoming during the year's peak Spring selling season,” said John Herrmann, president of Herrmann Forecasting. “However, given our outlook that the unemployment rate could reach 11.0% in early 2010, we remain cautious in our outlook for unit sales in the second half of 2009 and in early 2010.”

Since April 2008, the pace of new home sales have fallen 34%.

The median price of for a new home was $209,700, a higher price than the prior month’s $209,200. 

Inventory overhang remains a problem. At the current sales pace, there are 10.1-months of supply on the market, or 297,000 houses. 

On Wednesday, Existing Home Sales showed a monthly gain of 2.9% in April. The gain was better than expected, but inventories moved up to a 10.2-month supply, indicating too much overhang.