Sales of new-build homes rose in February and March as prices fell to their lowest level in five years, newly released data shows.
The number of signed contracts for new-build homes was 635,000 in February and 682,000 in March. U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported this Thursday. February was 8.9% higher than January, and March was 7.4% higher than February. March was also 3.3% above the same time last year.
New home prices fell: March’s median sales price was $387,000, down 5.3% from February’s $409,000, and down 6.2% from March 2025. March’s median sales price was the lowest since July 2021.
This follows the plunge of 587,000 sales in January, down 17.6% from December 2025 and 11.3% from this time last year. That number, the largest percentage decline since June 2013, surprised economists. The data was released with a delay due to the partial government shutdown.
In the meantime, the Census said last week that construction of single-family homes increased significantly in March, showing increased demand for housing. But that number came before the fallout from the Iran conflict and inflation. A telling sign was that new housing permits fell.
Competitive market
The recovery in sales volume from January is encouraging, says Realtor.com economist Joel Berner said. Given the high mortgage rate environment, buyers are often skittish. This forces more competition on the sales side. Indeed, major homebuilders have reported shrinking margins as they become more generous.
“Builders are aggressively cutting prices to move inventory, which we are seeing in the increase in sales pace and decline in sales prices,” Berner said. “Especially in March, when mortgage rates rose and buyers started to feel a little more skittish, builders were forced to offer increasingly attractive deals.”
The number of homes for sale shrank to 481,000 homes in March, which is 0.4% less than the 483,000 homes in February 2026. And it is 4.6% below the 504,000 homes in March 2025.
Meanwhile, existing home sales fell 3.6% in March, which was down about 1% from a year earlier, Relator.com found. The typical asking price in the first quarter of the year has softened, especially in the south and west. Asking prices for existing homes continue to rise in the Northeast and Midwest.
All this said, the housing market is under pressure from a variety of factors, including inflation and the conflict in Iran. So home sales figures in the coming months may reflect continued pressure, Berner said.
“Builders are generally more attuned to buyer demand than existing home sellers, so the price softness we see in this segment is important to consider,” Berner said. “We will probably see it in the existing segment soon as well.”
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Tristan Navera is a senior housing policy reporter covering housing market trends and solutions from Washington, DC. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Bloomberg Law, and before that was a real estate reporter for the Washington Business Journal. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade reporting on business and real estate in Dayton and Columbus, OH. He was born in Cincinnati and earned a journalism degree from Ohio University.
