PORTLAND (AP) — Home sales in Maine have continued to surge in spring.

Maine home sales increased by more than a third in April compared to a year ago, the Portland Press Herald reported. The median sales price also increased by more than a sixth, the paper reported.

The median sale price in the state was $276,000 for the month. Sales figures are also higher than pre-pandemic levels, said Aaron Bolster, a real estate broker and the president of the Maine Association of Realtors.

The trends in Maine were in line with national sales developments. Home sales around the U.S. increased nearly 30% in April from a year earlier, and prices also climbed about a fifth, the National Association of Realtors said.

After a painful year of joblessness, the future has finally brightened for Alycia St. Germain, a 22-year-old college senior at the University of Minnesota.

Having lost a part-time gig at Barnes and Noble last March as the viral pandemic tore through the U.S. economy, she was left unemployed like tens of millions of other Americans. But now, St. Germain has a job lined up — with benefits — even before graduation and in her chosen field of developmental psychology. A family friend established a new child-care center in St. Paul, and St. Germain landed a job as an assistant in the infant room.

“This,” she said, “is probably the most positive thing that could happen.”