New homes sales surprised everyone in March.  According to Bloomberg, new homes sales took the biggest jump in almost 12 years.  New purchases jumped 13.8% - the most since April 1993.  The annual rate is now tracking at 1.213 million up from 1.066 million in February, according to the Commerce Department.  Sales of resales jumped by a much smaller percentage - 0.3% in March to annual rate of 6.93 according to the National Association of Realtors yesterday.

That should be good news to mortgage lenders as well.  No doubt most of these home buyers will need mortgages. 

The median price of new home sales did drop slightly by 2.2 percent to $224,200 over the past 12 months, which was the first time that happened since December 2003.  The drop reflects the fact that more homes were bought in the price range of $150,000 to $299,999.  There were fewer sales of higher-priced homes compared to March 2005.