The National Association of Realtors is scheduled to release its April tally of pending home sales on Tuesday morning. So far this year, the housing market recovery that some people had been predicting has failed to materialize. While the market’s been lackluster, there are some signs of improvement. For a while now, we’ve heard from analysts that 6% is the magic number for mortgage rates; fall below that threshold, and they would begin to unlock the real estate market. In April, rates dipped just a tenth of a percentage point or so, but stayed above 6%.Yet Redfin’s measure of pending home sales rose 9.5% — the biggest jump in more than three years. “People have adjusted to these higher rates, or accepted the reality of them,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “There is pent-up demand, people do want to buy homes, and as it gets slightly more favorable for them to buy, those slight differences do make a difference.”What would also make a difference is more homes for sale, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. “If we can have inventory growth of 30%, 40%, definitely it gives consumers more choices,” he said, adding that that would bring inventories to pre-pandemic levels. For now, a majority of mortgage-holders pay rates below 4% and are among the legions of the “locked-in,” meaning sellers are staying on the sidelines, even as buyers trickle back in.