Home sales slipped and the number of homes listed for sale plunged as the U.S. coronavirus crisis turned into a national emergency in March, according to a report from tech-based brokerage Redfin. However, the U.S. median home sale price continued to increase, gaining 7.1% year over year and 3.3% month over month to $303,200.
COVID-19 turned a previously strong market housing market upside down, the company said. February had marked the eighth straight month of increases in home sales, and the U.S. economy was relatively stable. Therefore, the picture for the entire month of March will understate the stalled condition of the market heading into April, especially since most of the homes sold in March actually went into contract in February, before the coronavirus began to shut down the U.S. economy.
March home sales, which were only partially impacted by the coronavirus shutdowns, dropped 9.1% nationwide from February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, the largest decline since at least January 2012, when Redfin began tracking the statistic. Home sales also fell 1.2% year over year in March, the first decline in nine month. By the last week of the month they were down 11.5% from the same period a year earlier. The markets with the biggest declines in home sales from a year ago were all in New York State: Rochester (-18.5%), New York (-18.3%) and Nassau County (-17.3%).
“The impacts of the coronavirus hit the economy hard in mid-March, as we have been reporting in our weekly data, but it’s good to step back and take an aggregated look at the market,” said Taylor Marr, Redfin lead economist. “Real estate activities nearly ground to a halt in some parts of the country by the end of March, disrupted by shelter-in-place laws. Right now, sellers need to decide if they’ll list their home for sale among all the economic uncertainty. On one hand, the number of homes for sale is down more than 20% in recent weeks, even more than the 13% drop we saw for the full month of March, and home prices have so far held better than anyone expected. On the other hand, jobless claims continue to pile up and it is getting increasingly difficult to get a mortgage, which could limit buyer demand. How the market shapes up through the rest of spring will depend heavily on unemployment and the availability of credit.”
The national count of active listings of homes for sale fell 13% year over year during March, the biggest drop since January 2013 and the seventh straight month of declines. By the last week of the month, listings were down 18.8% from the same period a year earlier. There were fewer homes for sale last month than any time since at least January 2012, when Redfin began tracking the statistic. Just three of the 85 largest metros tracked by Redfin posted a year-over-year increase in the count of seasonally-adjusted active listings of homes for sale, led by Omaha (+9.9%), Minneapolis (+5.3%) and El Paso (+1.3%). Active listings is a count of all homes that were for sale at any time during the month.
None of the 85 largest metro areas Redfin tracks saw a year-over-year decline in the median sale price.
