New Home Sales at 6-Month High

Lower mortgage rates last month were cited as a contributing factor.

A house for sale in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a limited supply of single family homes in, in New York on March 31, 2021. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Sales of new single-family houses in March 2025 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 724,000, a six-month high, according to estimates released jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development on April 23.

The sales number was higher than the latest estimate in September 2024. March numbers were higher by 20.5 percent on a monthly basis and 6 percent yearly. A little more than half a million houses were left for sale at the end of March 2025, representing a supply of 8.3 months at the current sales rate.

The sales increase follows mortgage rates ticking down in March. After spiking at 7.04 percent in January, 30-year fixed rates had come down steadily to 6.65 percent by the end of March, according to Freddie Mac.

The rate has since gone up, and was at 6.83 percent, for the week ending April 17.

“The March new home sales data shows that demand continues to be present in the market, provided affordability conditions permit a purchase,” Buddy Hughes, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), said in an April 23 statement. “An increase in economic certainty would be a big boost to future sales conditions.”

Census figures put the median sales price of new houses sold in March 2025 at $403,600, 1.9 percent lower than February’s price, and 7.5 percent lower than in 2024. The average sales price in March 2025 was $497,700.

“Lower mortgage interest rates helped boost the pace of new home sales in March,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz.

A new home sale is recorded when a sales contract is signed or a deposit is accepted. The house does not need to be built for the sale to be recorded.

Out of the 724,000 homes sold last month, 28,000 were sold in the Northeast, 69,000 in the Midwest, 144,000 in the West, and 483,000 in the South.

Home sales declined by 22.2 percent in the Northeast while increasing by 13.6 percent in the South.

Canada Dumping Lumber

Housing construction costs are dependent on key input prices, especially for lumber.

Lumber future prices had gone up in March, increasing by more than 24 percent from the start of the year. The price has since come down and is trading at $586.54 per thousand board feet as of April 23.

There is concern about tariff-related increases, but it hasn’t yet affected prices. President Donald Trump had exempted Canada from the global tariffs he imposed on countries earlier this month.

Canada is a major supplier of lumber and wood products to the United States, accounting for a major share of the imports. Trump addressed the issue in a statement last month.

“The wood products industry, composed of timber, lumber, and their derivative products (such as paper products, furniture, and cabinetry) is a critical manufacturing industry essential to the national security, economic strength, and industrial resilience of the United States,” Trump said in a March 1 statement.

“This industry plays a vital role in key downstream civilian industries, including construction.

“The United States faces significant vulnerabilities in the wood supply chain from imported timber, lumber, and their derivative products being dumped onto the United States market.”

He said the United States remains a net importer even as the country’s lumber industry has the practical production capacity to supply 95 percent of market demand.

Trump ordered the Department of Commerce to investigate the effects on national security of imports of timber, lumber, and their derivative products.

On March 4, the Commerce Department issued a statement saying it has “preliminarily determined that softwood lumber from Canada was being dumped into the United States at preliminary margin rates ranging from 9.48 percent to 34.61 percent.”

The final results are set to be announced later this year along with corresponding duty rates.

Dumping margins refer to artificial price deflations that a country, in this case Canada, imposes on products such as lumber when exporting to the United States. The price reductions primarily work to undercut domestic producers.