Having dropped (a downwardly revised) 4.6 percent in February, prior to the impact of COVID-19 having taken hold, the pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. dropped another 15.4 percent in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 627,000 sales, which is 9.5 percent lower than at the same time last year.
At the same time, the median price of those homes which sold last month dropped 2.6 percent to $321,400 but remains 3.5 percent higher than at the same time last year, buoyed by an increase in higher-end sales, while the inventory of new single-family homes for sale across the county inched up 1.5 percent to 329,000 homes (which is effectively even with the same time last year).
And out West, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales plummeted 38.5 percent last month to an annual rate of 139,000 sales, which is 30.8 percent below the pace of sales at the same time last year with the same number of new homes on the market (85,000).