New home sales rose 8.8% in March despite high­er mort­gage rates

New home sales rose in March despite the hous­ing mar­ket feel­ing the effects of high­er mort­gage rates, which have recent­ly inched even high­er.
New home sales increased 8.8% from Feb­ru­ary to 693,000, accord­ing to a Tues­day report from the Cen­sus Bureau. The num­ber of new home sales is 8.3% high­er than it was in March of last year, owing in part to damp­ened inven­to­ry of exist­ing homes.
The medi­an sales price for a new home was $430,700 in March.
The hous­ing mar­ket is in a com­pli­cat­ed spot right now. Dur­ing the worst of the pan­dem­ic, the Fed­er­al Reserve cut its inter­est rate tar­get to near-zero and mort­gage rates plunged to ultra-low lev­els. At one point in ear­ly 2021, peo­ple were lock­ing in 2.5% mort­gages — the low­est lev­el in post-war mod­ern his­to­ry.
The low rates prompt­ed a rash of home­bu …