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The U.S. housing market accelerated in March despite elevated mortgage rates reducing some of the affordability improvement the market had recently seen, according to a new report.

Zillow released its market report for March which found that newly pending home listings increased 4.6% from a year ago in March.

That increased the number of listings to the second-largest monthly total since the end of the pandemic boom in August 2022, which Zillow said was a positive sign for the market as the home shopping season begins in earnest.

The housing market’s uptick occurred despite mortgage rates increasing from 5.98% at the end of February to 6.38% in late March, according to data from Freddie Mac. Excluding taxes and insurance, the typical mortgage payment increased 1.5% from February, which undercut some of the affordability improvements the market had seen.

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The housing market is showing signs it’s picking up despite mortgage rates rising higher again. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Zillow found that the monthly mortgage payment on a typical U.S. home was $1,789 in March, given a 20% down payment, after excluding taxes and insurance. While that figure rose on a monthly basis, it was 4.4% lower than last year, according to the report.

There were 1.23 million homes listed for sale in March. Inventory rose 9.5% from February and active inventory was 4.2% higher than it was a year earlier.

The number of new for sale listings totaled 384,854 in March, an increase of 0.1% from a year ago and 35.6% in February.

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Mortgage rates have risen lately, curbing some of the affordability improvements seen earlier this year. (Getty Images)

Newly pending listings – a figure that measures listings which changed from for sale to pending status rather than closed sales – shows 4.6% growth from a year earlier, and a 29.8% increase over February.

A total of 300,398 homes were sold in March, according to a preliminary reading from the Zillow sales count nowcast. That’s up 3.7% from a year ago and 25.2% from February, though those figures will be revised mid-month.

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The number of homes sold in March was up on both an annual and monthly basis. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Buyers and sellers have been navigating uncertainty and market volatility in some form since the onset of the pandemic, and this month’s concern over energy prices is no different,” said Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Zillow. “However, we have persistent signals that the market has turned a corner.”

“Pent-up demand from three years of low sales volume and winter storms in January and February, along with the tailwind from lower mortgage rates earlier in the year, seem to have buoyed the market as home shopping season kicked off. In particular, the rapid acceleration of daily page views per listing we saw in March was a noteworthy improvement over the dormant market of recent years,” Fischer added.

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Oracle on Monday announced it hired a new chief financial officer after the software giant moved forward with layoffs last week.

The company announced that Hilary Maxson will serve as the new CFO, joining Oracle from French industrial conglomerate Schneider Electric where she served in the same role. Oracle said her appointment to the rule is effective immediately.

Maxson, 48, will receive an annual base salary of $950,000 and will be eligible for a performance-based bonus with a target of $2.5 million, Oracle said in a regulatory filing.

The move comes on the heels of Oracle reportedly moving forward with a round of layoffs last week, with CNBC reporting the layoffs will affected thousands of workers at the tech company, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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Oracle has hired a new CFO as the company grapples with a costly AI buildout and restructures its workforce amid reported layoffs. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Oracle’s most recent 10-K filing noted the company had about 162,000 full-time employees in May 2025.

The company said in a March filing that it expects the total costs associated with its restructuring plan in fiscal year 2026 to be as high as $2.1 billion, most of which would go to employee severance and related expenses.

Oracle has recently ramped up capital spending to build artificial intelligence (AI) data centers as the company looks to incorporate those tools into its business software services. The company has projected $50 billion in capital expenditures for its fiscal year that ends in May, more than double its spending in the previous fiscal year.

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The cloud computing company said in February it planned to raise as much as $50 billion this year through a combination of debt and equity sales.

The company’s stock has been volatile over the last year amid the AI buildout, with shares up about 14% in the last year despite declines of 50% in the last six months and 25% year to date amid concerns that AI presents a competitive threat to software providers.

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Oracle’s stock has been volatile amid its AI buildout. (Getty Images)

Oracle’s move to hire Maxson as CFO will reinstate a position that was eliminated after Safra Catz became the company’s co-CEO and principal financial officer in 2014.

Maxson will report to Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk in her new role and said in a press release announcing her hiring that she is “excited to join at this pivotal moment.” 

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She added that she looks forward to partnering with the company’s leaders to “continue to invest with discipline and to translate this momentum into durable, long-term value for customers and shareholders.”

Reuters contributed to this report.