During COVID-19, few people are looking for homes – and even fewer are selling:

The median home price rose 8% year-over-year to $280,600 in March, according to the National Association of Realtors. While buyer demand has softened and sales fell 8.5% that month from the prior month, the supply of homes on the market is contracting even faster, recent preliminary data shows…

What’s more, many sellers have been reluctant to cut prices. Only about 4% of sellers cut their prices in the week ended April 25, down from 5.7% during the same week last year, according to Realtor.com. ( News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal, operates Realtor.com.)…

Total listings of homes for sale, meanwhile, have hit a five-year low, while the median listing price was up 1% from last year at $308,000, Redfin said.

The housing market has been undersupplied for years. During the pandemic it may get worse. There were 1.5 million units for sale at the end of March, NAR said, down 10.2% from a year earlier. Homeowners are waiting to list their houses, real-estate agents say, because they have decided not to move or they are worried about letting buyers into their homes during a pandemic.

It will be interesting to see how long this holds up given the rapid spike in unemployment. How many people will be in a position to buy or sell in the coming months? And how long will it take for housing markets to return back to pre-Covid levels of activity?

Beyond prices, which matter to many homeowners who want to do everything they can to keep property values going up, there are additional big issues at play. One is noted above: a lack of housing supply long-term, particularly in certain markets and in certain segments. Another is the possible effects on the mortgage industry. A third is what this does to the idea of housing when there have been two  major shocks to housing in the last fifteen years. A fourth is whether people decide they want to live in certain locations more because of health risks. Like other sectors of society, COVID-19 may expose or hasten problems with existing issues.

In other words, stay tuned.