Having dropped a downwardly revised 5.1 percent in February, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. rebounded 8.8 percent in March and was 8.3 percent higher than at the same time last year but over 10 percent lower than in early 2020, prior to the pandemic having hit, with a leading indicator of new sales activity having since dropped.
At the same time, the median sale price of the new homes sold last month jumped 6.0 percent, from $406,500 in February to $430,700 in March, driven by an uptick in higher-end sales and seasonality, but was 1.9 percent lower than at the same time last year and 13.3 percent below its fourth quarter of 2022 peak, with inventory levels, which are now 45 percent higher than prior to the pandemic, having ticked up to a 16-year high, despite continued misreporting of “supply constraints” in the press, none of which should catch any plugged-in reader’s by surprise.
