The housing market picked up in March as interest rates fell and the supply of properties for sale grew to its highest level in five months, data released Wednesday show.
Buyers closed on 7,072 single-family homes across the Houston area, an increase of nearly 5 percent over last year, according to a monthly report from the Houston Association of Realtors. The rental market had another hot month too, as leases for single-family homes spiked 18.4 percent.
“Home sales are benefiting from some of the lowest interest rates in years, but we also continue to see tremendous strength in the rental segment, and with inventory growing steadily, the Houston real estate market looks solid,” Shannon Cobb Evans, the association’s chair, said in a statement.
Though overall home sales inventory remains relatively low at 3.9 months, it reached a five-month high in March. The number of available properties last month jumped 17.5 percent to 41,127.