During the height of the pandemic in April, year-on-year growth was a paltry 0.6 percent, the slowest pace in three years.

“As a sense of normalcy returns, we expect to see a shortened, but strong summer home selling season, as long as seller confidence continues to improve and more homes are listed for sale,” Ms. Hale added.

As of Thursday morning, there have been 107,191 confirmed deaths in the U.S. due to Covid-19, and more than 1.85 million cases.

The decreased inventory amid the coronavirus lockdowns sparked listing-price increases in 35 of the 50 metro areas realtor.com tracks in the report, up from 30 areas in April.

“Ongoing inventory shortages that continue to worsen also push home prices higher even,” Ms. Hale said.

Inventory at the end of May, like prices, started to recover, as smaller declines were seen in 45 of the 50 largest U.S. markets compared to April.

But as for as inventory returning to normal levels, it’s not happening anytime soon, Ms. Hale told Mansion Global.

“It’s going to take a while for listing inventory to normalize,” she said. “The key will be watching for changes in the new listings declines. We’ve seen steady improvement nationally, and even in areas like Philly and New York, the current listings declines are notably smaller than what we saw last month, so while the numbers still aren’t good, they’re much better than they were.”

The stay-at-home orders in many states, not surprisingly, caused homes to sell more slowly; the typical home is now selling in 71 days, more than two weeks longer than last year, the report said.

Mansion Global is owned by Dow Jones. Both Dow Jones and realtor.com are owned by News Corp.