US home sales much worse than expected

What happened to all this talk about the US housing market bottoming out? According to the FT:

"New data on Wednesday showed that existing home sales dropped by 2.2 per cent in August, which was much worse than expected and highlighted the continuing downturn in the US housing market. The median existing home price fell 9.5 per cent to $203,100, the sharpest drop on record."

That doesn't sound much like a turning point.