In fact, Wednesday’s report from the National Association of Realtors showed that average sales prices actually dipped slightly from June to July. This seeming contradiction — increasing demand but anemic growth in home values — could represent a new normal in the housing market, experts said.

Real estate agents across the country cited the weak job market, stagnant wages and tight lending standards as continuing restraints on prices, despite pent-up demand and mortgage rates near record lows.

Even relatively optimistic observers like Michelle Meyer, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, foresaw only gradual improvements in home values. She expected home prices to rise 2 percent annually in 2012 and 2013, with momentum gradually increasing later in the decade. At that rate, the average home price would regain its 2006 peak in 2022.

“Inventory is lower and construction is incredibly depressed,” she said. “But it’s bumpy. We could see prices weaken slightly in the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013.”