The U.S. real estate market is emerging from its spring nadir brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, as prices rise and inventory slowly rebounds, according to realtor.com’s monthly housing trends report released Thursday.

Amid decreasing inventory and miniscule price growth, the overall housing market reached a low point in mid-April, the report said, only to see the median listing price surge to a record of $330,000 in May. Year-over-year that marked a 1.6% increase.

“May’s home price data demonstrate the underlying strength of the U.S. housing market despite the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic,” realtor.com’s chief economist, Danielle Hale, said in the report.

“The fact that home prices are at an all-time high shows that the momentum the market had prior to the pandemic has helped to keep buyer and seller expectations stable. Ongoing inventory shortages, that continue to worsen, also push home prices higher even while homes sell more slowly,” she said.

Based on NAHB's latest quarterly National Association of Home Builders Home Building Geography Index, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hasten a housing trend already taking place across the nation--residential construction activity that is expanding at a more rapid rate in lower density markets such as smaller cities and rural areas. Multifamily development is also proceeding at a brisk pace in areas where education and health services dominate.

"We expect the virus could affect future housing preferences for those currently living in the hardest-hit, high-density environments like central cities and that housing demand will continue to increase in medium- and low-density communities," said NAHB Chairman Dean Mon, a home builder and developer from Shrewsbury, N.J.

"The first quarter HBGI data reveals that construction growth expanded over the last year more quickly in low population density areas than high-density regions," said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. "This trend will continue as households seek out single-family homes further from urban cores, particularly as telecommuting continues in greater numbers."

An unavoidable lesson of the public health crisis associated with COVID-19 is that major metropolitan areas faced greater challenges. High-density lifestyles, championed by some urban planners over the last decade as a rival to suburban living, proved to be vulnerable to a virus due to crowded living conditions, dependency on mass transit, and insufficient health and public sector infrastructure.

The first quarter HBGI also features a new economic geography class based on local employment in the education and health services sector (EHS). Given the public health crisis associated with COVID-19, this sector is of critical importance. The HBGI designates EHS-focused regional markets as the top quartile of counties based on this employment share (25.7 percent or above of total employment). These counties also make up 23.2 percent of the U.S. population. This analysis finds :

• 12.4 percent of single-family construction occurs in EHS markets;

• 18.4 percent of multifamily construction occurs in these markets;

• Multifamily construction has outpaced single-family construction in these markets over the past year;

• Multifamily construction has expanded at nearly twice the growth rate of the rest of the construction in EHS markets over the past year; and

• Single-family construction was growing in EHS markets, but the rate was slower than the rest of the nation.