Sales of existing homes declined in March, down a whopping 22% from the year before.

The challenges in the housing market reflect the Federal Reserve’s efforts to lower inflation by raising interest rates, which has caused mortgage rates to rise and has put home purchases out of reach for many people.

Existing-home sales fell by 2.4% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.44 million, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors released Thursday.

Total housing inventory at the end of March was 980,000 units, up 1% from February and 5.4% from a year ago.

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The median price of an existing home in March was $375,700, a decline of 0.9% from the year before. Additionally, homes typically remained on the market for 29 days in March, down from 34 days in February but up from 17 days in March 2022.

The last report, for February, drew major headlines as it showed that existing home prices declined on an annual basis — that marked the first such decline after about 11 years of increases. The 131-month streak in housing price growth that was broken is the longest on record.

The Thursday report was preceded by a housing report by Redfin on Wednesday that showed home prices had their biggest annual decline in more than a decade. The median U.S. home sale price fell 3.3% in March to $400,528, according to Redfin.

The report also showed that seasonally adjusted pending home sales were down by 26.6% in the 12 months ending in March, and seasonally adjusted new listings fell 23.3%.

After surging above 7% late last year, mortgage rates fell as low as 6.09% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in early February, according to Freddie Mac. Mortgage rates then began rising again as the Fed eyed more rate hikes, increasing to 6.73% in early March. Since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, mortgage rates have tumbled to 6.27%.

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In another indication that the housing market is in recession, the number of housing starts tumbled in March, according to a report released this week by the Census Bureau.

Housing starts measure the change in the number of new residential buildings that began construction. Starts fell 17.2% from March 2022 to this past month. They are now at 1.42 million. From February to March, they fell 0.8%.