Real Estate by the Numbers: Week of March 19

A quick rundown of the important real estate news from the week of March 19 – March 25, by the numbers:

250,000 – Number of new homes sales in February on an annual basis. If the February pace is realized at the end of the year, it would be the least amount of new homes that Americans have bought since the government began tracking the figure a half a century ago. 323,000 new homes were bought last year, which was the worst year on record.

$202,000 – Current median new home price, the lowest since 2003.

9.6% – Percentage drop in existing homes sales, month-over-month. February’s 4.88 million unit pace is a drop from January’s 5.36 million unit pace. The previous three months all saw percentage gains in existing home sales.

18% – Percentage of Florida homes currently vacant. In total, there are 1.6 million vacant homes, a 63% increase in vacancy over the past decade.

23.6% – Rental vacancy rate in Orlando,Fl. Along with a 4.3% single-family vacancy rate, Orlando topped Forbes list of “America’s Emptiest Cities.” Las Vegas took second place, with rental vacancy rate of 13.5% and single-family vacancy rate of 5.5%.

17% – Approximate percentage of U.S. residents that are Hispanic. “The U.S. Latino population drove more than half of the country’s population growth between 2000-2010.”

2.7% – Percentage drop in mortgage applications for the week ending March 18. 66.4% of the total applications were refinances.

4.81% – Average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage loan. The rate is up from 4.76% the previous week.

29.1% – Percentage drop in Population in New Orleans since 2000, the biggest percentage loss for any city in the U.S. over the past decade. Detroit is second on that list, with a 25% drop in population. No city has lost more people over the last decade than Chicago, had over 200,000 people leave the city since 2000.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.