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Business, presumably, has been a bit better for real estate agents in 2012.

Existing home sales in January rose for the third time in the past four months, according to the National Association of Realtors. Existing home sales are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops.

Last month, those sales increased 4.3 percent from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million homes. That’s 0.7 percent above a spike of 4.54 million in January 2011.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said that kind of activity is in line with current favorable market conditions like pent-up household formation, low mortgage interest rates, low home prices and rising rents.

NAR also tracks home sales by region, and in the West, existing home sales grew 8.8 percent to an annual pace of 1.23 million in January. That’s 3.1 percent below a spike in January 2011. The median price in the West was $187,100 – down 1.8 percent from a year ago.

As for the rest of the nation, in the Northeast, existing home sales rose 3.4 percent to 600,000; in the Midwest they rose 1.0 percent to 980,000; and in the South they rose 3.5 percent to 1.76 million homes.

Nationwide, the country is looking at a 6.1 month housing supply with 2.31 million homes available for sale, which is down from a 6.4 month supply in December, according to the NAR.