Here's a snippet of the report courtesy of the St. Petersburg Times:

NEW HOME SALES ROCKET: Sales of new homes surged by 8.9 percent in March, the largest monthly increase in nine months, as mortgage rates bottomed out before starting to ascend. The increase pushed sales of new single-family houses to a record seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.23-million last month. That was up from 1.13-million in February, the Commerce Department said. The monthly increase of 8.9 percent was the highest since June 2003. New home sales soared by 19.3 percent in the South, hitting a record rate of 613,000.

March's new home sales numbers exceeded the record set in Sept. 2003.

While mortgage loan interest rates have increased since then, sales aren't slowing down, and they likely won't slow anytime soon.

-John Mudd
"Mr. Real Estate"