The coronavirus hit the housing market with full force in April, with sales and listings both turning in historic declines from year-ago levels, according to a report from Redfin.
According to the report, home sales in April declined 22.5 percent from a year ago. The number of homes newly listed for sale decreased 42.4 percent, and the number of homes available for sale dropped 24.5 percent.
Redfin said home prices in April were up 4.9 percent year-over-year, but that growth rate slipped from 6.9 percent in March. The national median sale price in April was $303,895.
“The supply of homes for sale declined even more dramatically than homebuyer demand in April,” Redfin Lead Economist Taylor Marr said in a release. “While home sales fell the most in more expensive markets, in more affordable areas prices continued to increase. Even during the depths of the slowdown last month the market was still faster and more competitive than it was a year earlier.”
Redfin identified San Francisco (-53.9 percent); Detroit (-46.8 percent); and New York (-45.8 percent) as the markets where sales slowed the most in April.
The report said nine of the10 metro areas where home prices rose the most year-over-year in April still had median prices below the national level, including Detroit, (median price $159,900, +27.9 percent); Memphis, Tenn. ($217,000, +22.0 percent); and Philadelphia ($250,000, +19 percent).
“The typical time between when a home went under contract and when the sale closes is still about four weeks nationally,” Marr said. “This means that many of the homes sold in April went under contract after the WHO declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, after initial claims for unemployment set new records, and after case numbers were already growing rapidly in the U.S. So, although some might have expected this dramatic disruption in the market to impact home prices, we haven’t yet seen evidence that it has had much of an effect.”