Dive Brief:

• New single-family home sales inched down 1.5% between February and March to an annual rate of 511,000 units, the Commerce Department reported Monday. February’s figure of 512,000 was upwardly revised to 519,000.
• The median sales price of homes sold in March was $288,000, down from $301,400 in February.
• Although new homes sales decreased in March due to a 23.6% plunge in the West, the rate of sales the Northeast remained unchanged, and the Midwest (18.5%) and South (5%) both saw gains. 

Dive Insight:

NAHB Chairman Ed Brady said the 2.1% rise in the available supply of homes from 241,000 in February (5.6-month supply) to 246,000 in March (5.8-month supply) is indicative of "cautious" homebuilders who are gradually increasing their inventories.

NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said that even though there was little change to new home sales this month, overall sales in the U.S. saw a "modest" year-over-year increase of 5.4%, according to the Commerce Department. He also said that the NAHB expects a faster sales pace for the remainder of 2016 given the environment of low interest rates and rising employment.  

Chiming in with positive sales numbers for existing homes last week, the National Association of Realtors reported an unexpected sales increase of 5.1% to a seasonally adjusted 5.33 million between February and March, with all four regions of the country seeing sales gains.

However, the Commerce Department reported last week that housing starts dropped 8.8% from February to March. The agency also found that new applications for building permits were down 7.7%, and that both single-family (-9.2%) and multifamily (-8.5%) construction was down as well.