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With home sales effectively flat across the state last month, January offered few signs of encouragement that the 2024 housing market will be a significant improvement over last year’s.

Only 2,396 single-family homes and 975 condominiums sold in Massachusetts in January, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. That represents a 0.2 percent increase in single-family sales and a 17.1 percent drop in condo sales over last January.

Meanwhile, the median single-family price rose 10.2 percent to $550,000 and the median condo sale price increased 5.5 percent to $507,000, both all-time highs for any January since The Warren Group started keeping records.

“The issues that pained the Massachusetts housing market in 2023, like limited inventory, economic uncertainties, and higher interest rates are still at the forefront of prospective buyers. The Warren Group will keep a close eye on activity in the coming months, but in the coming months relief for prospective homebuyers with realistic budgets seems unlikely,” Cassidy Norton, media relations director for The Warren Group, said in a statement, adding that “[c]ondos are a hot commodity, but supply can’t keep up with demand.”

Leading indicators offered only slight improvements.

Statewide, the number of new single-family listings that hit the market in January rose 5.1 percent to 2,589, according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, while the same figure for condo listings rose 13.1 percent to 1,592. But buyers in last month’s housing market were still staring at a pool of single-family listings on the market in January that was 29.2 percent smaller than the same month last year – 3,518 houses – and a pool of condo listings that was 22.4 percent smaller at 1,973 units.

In the combined territories of the Greater Boston Association of Realtors – covering MetroWest and much of the area within Route 128 excepting the North Shore – the Northeast Association of Realtors, North Shore Realtors and South Shore Realtors, which largely covers the Greater Boston region within Interstate 495, data reported by GBAR and MAR showed a 3.5 percent increase in single-family listings, to 1,268 and a 1.1 percent increase in condo listings, to 1,222.

However, total numbers of active single-family listings in Greater Boston in January fell by nearly 24 percent year-over-year to 1,488, while the number of active condo listings in January fell by 5.9 percent to 1,565.

Data from mortgage data company Optimal Blue, reported last week, showed that demand for home-purchase mortgages in the Boston area was accelerating much faster than the national average in January despite the relative stagnation in housing supply, an early indication that the region is in for another year of significant home price increases.

Within I-495, single-family sales slid up 3.2 percent year-over-year to a total of 1,110 in January, while condo sales plummeted 20.5 percent on the same basis, to 671. The Warren Group reported that the median single-family sale price in the area, which encompasses Greater Boston, jumped 10.4 percent year-over-year to $690,000 while the median condo sale price rose to $625,000, a 13.4 percent leap.

“We’ve seen a steady increase in foot traffic at open houses since the beginning of the year, which bodes well for the upcoming spring market,” GBAR 2024 President Jared Wilk, a broker with Compass in Wellesley, said in a statement. “The level of buyer interest is the strongest we’ve seen in at least six months, with the majority of those currently in the market much more serious and intent on buying than those who were shopping for a home this past summer and fall. What we need now is an influx of listings to meet the demand.”