The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that national home sales jumped in December but prices continued to drop, and economists said it was too early to conclude the housing market was on a rebound. The Globe's Rachelle Younglai writes that an 8.7-per-cent bump in transactions from November to December was the first monthly increase since June, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). Last month's volume was similar to the spring, when buyers briefly flooded the market in the belief that the Bank of Canada was done raising interest rates. CREA and bank economists cautioned against reading too much into last month's sales. Shaun Cathcart, CREA's senior economist, said that the increased activity probably does not mean a turnaround in the market; more likely it was because some sellers finally accepted that they would not get the prices they saw in early 2023. TD Bank also made similar predictions. "We'd be cautious in drawing too many implications from this report," TD economist Rishi Sondhi said in a research note, adding that the mild December weather may have encouraged more sales. "We'd need a few more months of data to assess if this is really a turning of the tides for housing."