Metro Atlanta home sales continued their decline while prices rose to further outpace last year, according to the October Atlanta Realtors report.

In October, 4,448 homes were sold, a 2.9 percent decrease from last year and a 5.3 percent decrease from last month. The decreases were much smaller than the cooling off that occurred in September when the number of sales dropped year-over-year by 10.3 percent and 20.5 percent from August.

“Price growth and inventory have been stable for many months, and the positive economic signs are that the market should continue to be strong into next year,” said Atlanta Realtors President Bill Murray. “These healthy trends, however, depend on homebuilders adding new inventory to keep pace with demand.”

Inventory did in fact increase 5.3 percent to 14,947 units last month. But supply over a 12-month period has decreased to three months. New listings climbed 12.7 percent from last year, totaling 4,962, and up 2.7 percent from the previous month.

Though sales dropped, home prices still continued to climb in October as demand . The median home sales price increased 9.1 percent to $263,000 compared to last October, a slight increase over September.

Gwinnett County led the area in sales with 888 but had the lowest median home sales price of the four largest metro counties at $250,000. Fulton County came in second with 856 units sold with the highest median home price of $336,000.