As of May, the median price of existing U.S. homes is up 2 percent since last year. While home sales had a strong end to 2019, with prices up 9 percent a year before, that number has quickly fallen to a decline of over 26 percent from the year prior.

With falling home sales, many would expect home prices to also fall due to lower demand. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the supply of available homes is falling even faster than the demand for them, leading to a steady increase in prices.

For the first month of the pandemic, the real estate industry remained relatively strong. Home sales began to drop significantly in April, however, as ongoing restrictions kept potential home buyers out of the market.

Traditionally, home prices have steadily increased over the last five decades. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median home price in the country was just around $24,000 in 1970. Compare that to 2020, where the median home price for the first quarter of 2020 was roughly $320,000. The only significant drop in home prices came from the real estate crash beginning in 2007, which contributed to the Great Recession. Home prices between 2007 and 2009 dropped by 19 percent, as new sales and new housing starts plummeted for years to follow.

Home prices in the U.S. today have yet to see any clear signs of dropping, even as home sales fall. The uniqueness of the situation certainly plays a role; instead of risky loans defaulting and foreclosures skyrocketing, a global pandemic is making it nearly impossible for people to purchase a home in the first place. With the real estate industry expecting reopening measures to continue into the summer, there’s not yet enough incentive to lower home prices.

Still, even with rising demand, a new report indicates home prices may be gearing up for an extended slump beginning in 2021. The lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, even if reopening plans are allowed to continue through 2020, are predicted to be felt across most global industries, and real estate may see similar housing price drops to the Great Recession over the next few years.

Willem Roper is a market editor at Statista Inc.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.