April is usually spring's poster child, thanks to the rainy days, blooming flowers, baby birds, and a flurry of housing market activity. But instead of the giant jump in home sales, the number of new homes in April fell 44.1 percent nationally compared to last year. As a result, the overall number of homes for sale dropped by 15.3 percent year-over-year. Though the median home prices stood at $320,000, which is the same as March, it also shows how deeply the pandemic has affected the housing market as prices should have increased based on the trajectory of the housing market before COVID-19.
April is usually one of the busiest months for the housing market, as the spring home-buying season is well underway. Not this year. The novel coronavirus has dealt the real estate market a series of blows, starting with sidelining both buyers and sellers and worsening the already severe housing shortage.
The number of homes that went on the market plummeted in April compared with the previous year. New listings were down 44.1% nationally, according to realtor.com®’s Monthly Housing Trends Report. That affected the overall number of homes for sale, which was down by about 189,000 listings, representing about a 15.3% drop in housing inventory in April compared with the prior year.