NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The U.S. housing market showed continued strength in August, reflecting the impact of mid-summer lows in mortgage rates, according to separate reports Thursday from the government and the nation's Realtors.

A report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed sales of previously owned homes rose 5.5 percent to a record annual rate of 6.47 million in the month, after rising 5.1 percent in July. Economists, on average, expected a pace of 6.05 million units, according to Briefing.com.

NAR chief economist David Lereah said the jump in sales was mainly the result of historic, mid-June lows in mortgage rates and a last-minute scramble to buy houses when those rates started to rise again.

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The recent gain in rates should cool the housing market in the coming months, the NAR said -- but not by much.

"Mortgage interest rates have been lower than projected for most of 2003, but the 30-year fixed rate should hover between 6.0 and 6.5 percent for the rest of the year," NAR President Cathy Whatley said in a release. "We expect home sales to moderate but remain historically strong in the coming months."

Separately, the Commerce Department said sales of new homes rose 3.4 percent to an annual pace of 1.15 million units after falling 5.7 percent in July. Economists, on average, expected a pace of 1.12 million units, according to Briefing.com.

U.S. stock prices had little reaction to the data and were lower in early trading. Treasury bond prices continued to rise.

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Though the economy suffered through a recession in 2001 and has slogged through a jobless recovery ever since, super-low interest rates have fueled demand for mortgages, which has boosted the housing market and encouraged a boom in mortgage refinancing.

Consumers have been able to cut their monthly debt payments and tap into their higher home equity through mortgage refinancings. Consumer spending, which fuels more than two-thirds of the total economy, has been supported as a result.

The national median existing-home price was $177,500 in August, the NAR said, up 9.8 percent from August 2002, when the median price was $161,700.

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Some economists have worried that home prices are in a dangerous "bubble" -- similar to over-inflated technology-stock prices in the late 1990s -- which could abruptly pop, hurting homeowners. Though most economists dismiss this concern, saying the national housing market is too big and diverse for prices to move up and down in unison, some say it is possible that bubbles could develop in regional markets.

One condition of a bubble, overly high housing inventories, is certainly not a problem; the backlog of houses on the market fell to a 4.6-month supply, compared with an already-low 4.7-month supply in July. In fact, the supply of houses may be too tight, contributing to the heady gains in prices in recent months.

"You want to make sure homes are affordable; when they start to increase at lofty rates, you start to worry about affordability," NAR's Lereah said. "But certainly, right now, the fundamentals are so good in housing that if we have a drop-off in price gains, it's still going to be at healthy levels."

Existing home sales were strongest in the West, rising 8 percent. Sales in the South rose 6.5 percent, while sales in the Midwest rose 3 percent and sales in the Northeast rose 1.4 percent.

New home sales were strongest in the Midwest, according to the Commerce Department report, jumping 12.9 percent. Sales in the Northeast rose 12.5 percent, while sales in the West rose 2.4 percent and sales in the South fell 1.1 percent.