The future looks bleak for home sales, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors released Tuesday. The association’s seasonally adjusted index of pending sales dropped 6.5 percent since July. August’s rating of 85.5 was the lowest since the index was created in 2001. (A rating of 100 represents the average home sales activity for 2001.) The pending home sales index is used to predict home sales over the following two months. Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturing appears shaken by the housing meltdown as manufacturing expanded in September at its worst pace since March, according to Reuters. Activity in factories across the nation fell for the third straight month in August, the Institute for Supply Management said in a report. The index of activity in American factories fell from 52.9 to 52. “Overall, soft but not disastrous,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, told Reuters after the report’s release. “We had expected a slightly higher reading following a raft of regional surveys released last week, so this is a modest surprise.”