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The American housing market According to a new report, interest rates accelerated in March despite high mortgage rates, which reduced some of the affordability improvement the market had recently seen.
Zillow released its March market report, which showed new home additions rose 4.6% in March from a year ago.
That boosted listings to the second-largest monthly total since the end of the pandemic boom in August 2022, which Zillow said was a positive sign for the market as the home shopping season begins in earnest.
Despite this, a revival of the housing market took place mortgage interest rising from 5.98% at the end of February to 6.38% at the end of March, according to data from Freddie Mac. Excluding taxes and insurance, typical mortgage payments rose 1.5% from February, undermining some of the affordability improvements the market had seen.
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The housing market is showing signs of strengthening, despite mortgage rates rising again. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Zillow found that the monthly mortgage payment for a typical American home in March was $1,789, given a 20% down payment, excluding taxes and insurance. While that figure increased month-over-month, it was 4.4% lower than last year, according to the report.
In March there were 1.23 million homes for sale. Inventory rose 9.5% from February and active inventory was up 4.2% from a year earlier.
The number of new ones for sale offers stood at 384,854 in March, up 0.1% from a year ago and 35.6% in February.
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Mortgage rates have been rising recently, slowing some of the affordability improvements from earlier this year. (Getty Images)
New open entries – a figure that measures listings that have changed from “for sale” status to “pending” status instead of closed sales status – shows a growth of 4.6% from a year earlier, and an increase of 29.8% from February.
A total of 300,398 homes were sold in March, according to a preliminary reading of the Zillow sales count. That’s an increase of 3.7% from a year ago and 25.2% from February, although these figures will be revised mid-month.
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The number of homes sold increased both on an annual and monthly basis in March. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Buyers and sellers have faced uncertainty and market volatility in one form or another since the pandemic began. energy prices That’s no different,” said Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow. “However, we have continued signals that the market has turned a corner.”
“Pent-up demand from three years of low sales volumes and winter storms in January and February, along with tailwinds from lower mortgage rates earlier this year, appear to have buoyed the market as the home shopping season kicked off. In particular, the rapid acceleration in daily page views per ad we saw in March was a notable improvement over the dormant market of recent years,” Fischer added.
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