In what has been forecast as an otherwise generally dormant market, sales of new single-family homes saw a substantial increase of nearly 11% last month.
In figures compiled by both the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development it is also noted that the median new home price in April stood at $407,200, down from $415,300 in April of 2024.
The April increase in home sales is regarded as an anomaly by Buddy Hughes, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders who, in a statement, said a “more reliable look would be the year-to-date figures, which show new home sales are down 1.2%.”
That figure, added Hughes, is due to “elevated interest rates, ongoing policy uncertainty, and rising construction costs.”
Overall home sales, according to a separate report compiled by the National Association of Realtors, showed a 0.5% decline in April, with sales in general off by 2% from where things stood a year ago.
The median existing home price for all housing types, meanwhile, reached the $414,000 mark in April, up from $406,000 in April of 2024.
“At the macro level, we are still in a mild seller’s market,” remarked Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors, in a press release dissecting the latest figures.
Even so, continued Yun, “with the highest inventory levels in nearly five years, consumers are in a better situation to negotiate for better deals.”
Regionally, sales were down in the Northeast by 2%, with a median price of $480,000; while the Midwest saw a sales improvement of 2.1% with a median $313,000 price.
The South, which has seen some of the nation’s most robust numbers in the last year, was off by 3.2%, for a $365,300 median. The decline in the West was, by contrast, smaller at 1.3%, with a strong median price of $628,500.
The overall pace of home sales, Yun noted, has remained relatively unchanged since 2022. The economist remarked that those sales have been at “75% of normal or pre-pandemic activity for the past three years, even with seven million jobs added to the economy.”
May 27, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
