Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in March for the second straight month as buyers grappled with a stubbornly low inventory of available properties and fierce competition pushed prices to new highs. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that existing home sales fell 3.7% last month from February to a seasonally-adjusted rate of 6.01 million annualized units. Sales jumped 12.3% from March last year. The report also showed that the U.S. median home price jumped 17.2% in March from a year earlier to $329,100, an all-time high. At the end of March, the inventory of unsold homes stood at just 1.07 million homes for sale. At the current sales pace, that amounts to a 2.1 months’ supply.
