The sale of new single-family houses rebounded to a six-month high nationwide in March.
The annual rate of single-family home sales in the U.S. was 693,000 in March, up 8.8% from February and 8.3% higher than the same month in 2023, according to joint estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Despite solid home sales in 2024, Oliver Allen, a senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, says he anticipates slower homebuying activity over the coming months due to an uptick in mortgage rates and a pullback in mortgage applications in March.
“New home sales have remained remarkably strong recently,” Allen told Reuters. “That said, the renewed rise in mortgage rates and dip in mortgage applications… means that new home sales will probably tread water at best.”
According to March estimates, the median and average sales prices for a new single-family home in the U.S. were $430,700 and $524,800, respectively, or about 4.4% and 7.1% more expensive than the same point in 2023. At the end of March, 477,000 new single-family homes were for sale nationwide, or about 8.3 months of supply at the current sales rate.
As The Dallas Express previously reported, U.S. mortgage rates climbed to 7.50% in April, marking the highest level since November 2023.
Even with swelling home prices and soaring mortgage rates, there wasn’t enough pressure to deter homebuyers or slow activity during the month, according to Gregg Logan, managing director at RCLCO Real Estate Consulting.
Logan explained that major homebuilders have been willing to utilize incentives such as price reductions, mortgage rate buy-downs, and paying closing costs to help maintain the pace of new home sales in the U.S.
“As rates come down later this year we expect that trend to continue,” he said, per U.S. News.