The housing-market boom that pushed home prices upward for eight-years throughout the United States sputtered abruptly in May 2020 in large swaths of the country – the first sign that the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic is damaging property values across the nation.

New sales figures from ATTOM Data Solutions show that median home prices stayed the same or dropped from April to May of 2020 in 17 states, as well as in half the metropolitan areas with enough transactions to analyze. (The analysis included 42 states with at least 250 sales and 160 metro areas with at least 100 sales in May.)

Major metro areas buffeted by monthly price drops in May ranged far and wide, from Charlotte, NC, where the median value dropped 10 percent, to Detroit, MI, where it dipped 7 percent, to Billings, MT, where it decreased 7 percent, to Honolulu, HI, which saw a 3 percent decline.

The downward shift marked a striking change from price jumps earlier in 2020 and from patterns commonly seen during Spring home-buying seasons from year to year.

Typically, prices increase each year as Winter gives way to the Spring buying season. For example, more than three quarters of states and metro areas with at least 100 single family home and condo sales in May 2020, saw median values climb in both March and April of this year, commonly going up by 2 percent to 6 percent each month. Those gains tracked fairly closely with changes from February to March and from March to April in 2017, 2018 and 2019.