The housing market is on a slow road to recovery.

Sales of existing home sales climbed 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.47 million in July according to the National Association of Realtors. Home resales were also up more than 10 percent compared to a year ago. This was just slightly lower than economist expectations.

The number of first-time home buyers rose to 34 percent of sales, up slightly from June. In a healthy market, first-time buyers make up about 40 percent of sales.

The median price of existing homes climbed 9.4 percent to $187,300 compared to a year ago. This was the strongest year-over-year increase since January 2006.

At the current rate if would take about 6.4 months to sell all the homes on the market. A six month supply of homes is considered healthy.

Existing homes are the biggest chunk of the housing market so an important measure of the housing market as a whole.

Thanks to low mortgage rates this is a great time to buy if you can navigate the tight lending market and manage to get a loan.