CHICAGO — The hot housing market — the bubble, as some have referred to it — is still going strong, but a dip in median prices nationally for new single-family homes for the second month in a row has some analysts puzzling.

Is it a blip? A reaction to an oversupply?

Or is it an early warning sign that real estate is in for a slowdown?

The Commerce Department reported yesterday that new home sales in June jumped 4 percent to a new record pace of 1.37 million units, but the median sales price last month dropped 5.5 percent to $218,800, down from the May median of $227,400. This was after a 2 percent decline in May.

The median is the point where half the homes sold for more and half sold for less. New home prices set a record median at $232,600 in April.

The report provided "a little bit of relief from us worried about a housing bubble," said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist for LaSalle Bank, Chicago, in response to the slight price dip.

"It would be nice to see things cool down," said Tannenbaum of the hot housing market.

Of course, a slowdown is one thing. The pricking of a bubble leading to a sudden drop in prices is another. Concerns about a housing bust have been centered on superhot markets like California and Florida, and not Chicago, where appreciation has been torrid but not seen as unhealthy.

Real estate watchers have been closely analyzing data to understand the trends, and they say the decline in new home prices could be a significant signal, or there could be other explanations.

Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City Corp., Cleveland, said the fact that the median price for resales of existing homes leaped 14 percent in June 2005 over June 2004, while the median for new homes is down year-over-year, is intriguing. But he added that median new home prices tend to be volatile and must be viewed cautiously.

"New home prices are much more sensitive to market conditions," he noted.

If supply is getting out ahead of demand, developers are likely to cut prices, he said, because they don't have the luxury of waiting out the market.

"It could be that we are seeing inventories putting pressure on prices," he said, but that can only be determined over a period of several months.

The housing report showed that in the Midwest sales in June rose 2 percent from May. However, the region's sales for June 2005 were 24 percent ahead of the level a year earlier.

"We may not yet have seen the peak" for housing, thanks to the strong number of spring home mortgage applications, DeKaser said.

"It is entirely possible that we will see more records, and we are virtually assured a fifth consecutive record year of new home sales," he said.

The biggest gains in June new home sales were for homes priced at $150,000 to $199,999. Sales declined, however, for housing priced at $250,000 and higher.

Elsewhere, the Federal Reserve said yesterday in its survey of regional economies, called the Beige Book, that local housing markets continue to expand but at a slower pace than before.

"Residential real estate activity remained robust overall but show a few signs of cooling in some districts," the Fed said. The report cited Massachusetts, where sales and prices moved from "hot" to "normal," and New Jersey, where housing inflation slowed.

It also noted housing continued to be strong in the Southeast and West but had eased in markets that had been "especially hot."

One reason for the cooling off in those markets, Tannenbaum said, was that banks and developers were striving to rein in multiple-unit purchasers by speculators. At the same time, he believes "sticker shock" is setting in for buyers of housing priced $750,000 and higher.

"People are still buying but they are bidding less," he said.