New home sales in April were at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 743,000, an increase of 10.9% compared with March and up 3.3% compared with April 2024, according to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
As of the end of April, there were about 504,000 new homes available for sale in the U.S. That’s down 0.6% compared with March but up 8.6% compared with April 2024.
It’s also about an 8.1-month supply at the current sales rate.
The median sales price of a new home sold in April was $407,200 – an increase of 0.8% compared with the previous month but down 2.0% from a year earlier.
The average sales price of a new home sold in April was $518,400 – an increase of 3.7% compared with March and an increase of 3.6% compared with April 2024.
“Builders are off to a better spring than expected, despite higher mortgage rates in April,” says Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist for First American, in a statement. “New-home sales in April beat consensus expectations and jumped approximately 11 percent above the March seasonally adjusted rate, even beating last April’s seasonally adjusted pace by 3.3 percent.”
Kushi notes that starting with this months’ report, new-home sales data have been revised back to January 2020.
“While the median sales price of a new home ticked up slightly on a month-over-month basis, prices are down 2 percent from a year ago,” Kushi says. “Generally, new-home prices have been trending lower since prices peaked in 2022. This is in part an indication that builders are increasingly leaning on price incentives to support demand, but it’s also indicative of a shift in sales being concentrated at lower price points. For example, one year ago, 46 percent of new-home sales were priced below $400,000, whereas in April of this year that share increased to 49 percent.”
Photo: Amanda Smith