Sales of previously owned single-family homes on Maui skidded hard last month to a 10-year low.

There were 56 sales in January compared with 106 in the same month last year and 86 in December. The last time the sales tally was lower for any month was November 1998 when there were 47 sales, according to sales data from the Realtors Association of Maui.

Terry Tolman, chief executive of the trade association for Maui real estate agents, said January's extremely low sales figure was a surprise, but could be part of the market's volatility where sales have bounced up and down over the months since peaking in mid-2005.

The reduction of resort home sales helped bring down Maui's median single-family home sale price by 5 percent to $574,113 in January from $602,000 a year earlier.