NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The pace of new home sales in the United States plunged in January, the government said Thursday, as the housing market, one of the few bright spots in an otherwise murky economy, showed signs of strain.

The Commerce Department said the pace of new home sales fell 15.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 914,000 units from a revised rate of 1.08 million units in December. Economists, on average, expected a pace of 1.05 million units, according to Briefing.com.

New home sales make up a relatively small part of the total U.S. housing market, compared with the approximately 5.5 million existing homes sold in 2002.

The National Association of Realtors reported earlier this week that existing home sales set a record pace in January, conflicting sharply with Thursday's report on new home sales.

"I don't worry about new home sales," said James Glassman, senior U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan (and not the James Glassman who wrote "Dow 36,000"). "We had record existing home sales in January, and all the housing indicators are pretty strong. I just see this as noise."

The report had some impact on U.S. stock prices, which gave up some early gains before recovering somewhat. Treasury bond prices were mixed.

The housing market has been supported by record low mortgage rates, which have encouraged demand and driven prices higher.

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This has helped the broader economy by making homeowners feel wealthier and by inspiring a glut of refinancing, which has cut many homeowners' mortgage payments and given them more cash to spend. And when people buy houses, they have to furnish and fix up those houses, encouraging more economic activity.

Housing has been so strong, in fact, that some have worried about the possibility the market is in a price "bubble," much like the technology stock bubble of the late 1990s.

Most economists dismiss such fears, however, saying inventories of housing are low enough to support recent gains in prices, so it seems unlikely that prices will suddenly fall precipitously.

"The notion of a bubble bursting and the whole price level coming down ... as a national phenomenon is really quite unlikely," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday while answering questions at a U.S. Senate committee hearing, according to a Reuters report.