ATTOM, a leading curator of real estate data nationwide for land and property data, today released its first-quarter 2022 U.S. Home Sales Report, which shows that profit margins on median-priced single-family home sales across the United States dipped to 47.2 percent – the first quarterly decline since late 2019 and the largest in a decade.

In a sign that the nationwide housing-market boom may be slowing, the latest profit margin was down from 51.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021. While profit margins often decrease during the relatively slow Winter home-buying season, the latest dip of more than four percentage points marked the first quarterly decline since the fourth quarter of 2019 and the largest since the first quarter of 2011.

The report reveals that the typical return on investment remained historically high, easily topping the 37.5 percent level recorded in the first quarter of 2021 and almost 20 points above the 29.4 percent figure from the first quarter of 2019.

Gross profits, while also near record highs, followed a similar pattern in the first quarter of 2022. The typical single-family home sale across the country generated a gross first-quarter profit of $103,000, down from $107,187 in the fourth quarter of last year, although still well above $75,001 a year earlier.

"Home prices simply can't continue to go up as rapidly as they have for the past few years," said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence for ATTOM. "The combination of higher prices, rising mortgage rates, and the highest rates of inflation in 40 years may be pricing some prospective buyers out of the market, which means we may begin to see lower sales numbers. Ultimately, as affordability worsens, price appreciation should slow down, and we may even see modest price corrections in some markets."

The lower gross profits came as the national median home price increased just 1.7 percent, from $315,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $320,500 in the first quarter of this year. That marked the ninth straight quarterly record and was up 16.5 percent from the first quarter of 2021. But the modest quarterly gain fell below price spikes that first-quarter sellers commonly were paying when they originally bought their homes, which led to the decline in profits.