The Spring home-buying season kicked off with new home purchase applications up considerably in March from both an annualized and monthly perspective, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Builder Application Survey (BAS) data.
Applications for newly built homes were 11 percent higher than a year earlier and 26 percent higher than they were in February, per an MBA press release. These numbers did reflect any adjustments for typical seasonal patterns.
MBA Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist Joel Kan noted that these gains pushed the BAS Market Index to its highest level since the survey’s inception in 2012.
“While the index is not adjusted for seasonality, March kicks off the start of spring homebuying season and does typically see an increase in purchase activity,” Kan explained in the release. “Last month, mortgage rates rose and economic uncertainty increased, and our estimate of new home sales reached its highest level in four months. This growth was supported by higher levels of unsold inventory in many markets across the country, some of which were move-in ready and were relatively more appealing to homebuyers who were eager to purchase a home.”
More than half of the applications received by lenders in March were for loans backed by government agencies, including the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“This was the third consecutive month that the government share of applications was more than 50 percent,” Kan said. “While mortgage rates overall increased in March, rates on FHA mortgages did not increase as quickly as for conforming loans, which supported some of the shift to government loans, as affordability remains a focus for many homebuyers.”
MBA said it estimated new single-family home sales, which the organization has consistently observed to be a leading indicator of the U.S. Census Bureau’s New Residential Sales report, were running at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 717,000 units in March 2026.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, MBA estimated there was a 11.9 percent increase in March, compared to the February pace of 641,000 units. On an unadjusted basis, MBA estimates that there were 69,000 new home sales in March 2026, an increase of 21.1 percent from 57,000 new home sales in February.
The new home sales estimate is derived using mortgage application information from the BAS, as well as assumptions regarding market coverage and other factors.
By product type, conventional loans composed 49.1 percent of loan applications, FHA loans composed 36.3 percent, USDA loans composed 1.2 percent and VA loans composed 13.4 percent. The average loan size for new homes decreased from $383,570 in February to $381,938 in March.