By Robbie Whelan | The Wall Street Journal
What’s bad news for homebuyers is good news for builders: The low inventory of previously owned houses for sale is driving up new-home sales—and prices.
New-home sales jumped 1.5% in March to an annual pace of 417,000, the second-highest monthly sales pace in three years, according to data released Tuesday by the 
Commerce Department. Year-over-year March sales were up 18.5%.
The figures come one day after the National Association of Realtors reported that there were just 1.93 million existing homes for sale last month, the lowest tally for the month of March since 2000.
Builders, meanwhile, are increasing the number of new homes they are putting on the market. Tuesday’s figures showed that there were 153,000 newly built homes listed for sale, adjusted for seasonal factors, which is the most since November 2011. That supply would take 4.4 months to deplete at the current sales pace, unchanged from February.
