Prices are hitting all-time highs, above Palo Alto's 2007 peak levels, in the 94301 and 94306 ZIP codes, as buyers rush to purchase in advance of an expected flood of newly minted millionaires when Facebook Inc. has its initial public offering, DeLeon said. The Menlo Park-based social-networking company filed paperwork in February for an IPO that may result in a market valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion.
"It's insane," DeLeon, who brokered 101 home sales last year valued at $275 million, said in a telephone interview. "It's probably the hottest housing market in the nation."
In Phoenix, total listings as of March 23 were down 43 percent from a year earlier to 21,346 homes on the market, according to the Cromford Report, a Phoenix-area market research service. When pending sales are excluded, the number of available homes on the market fell 55 percent from a year ago. Distressed offerings dropped more, with the number of short-sale listings down 84 percent and bank-owned homes off 80 percent.
Shopper Sentiment Improves
The average home's time on the market fell to 90 days from 114 a year earlier, and the median sale price rose to $126,000 from $110,000, according to the Cromford Report.
Contributing to the higher prices and faster sales pace in Phoenix were high investor-buying activity, normal homebuyers attempting to enter the market, speedier short-sale processes and an improvement in shopper sentiment, said Mike Orr, publisher of the Cromford Report. In a short sale, a property is sold for less than the amount owed on it.
"The inventory decline is accelerating," Orr, who's also director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University's business school, said in an e-mail.
The key ingredients are in place for a housing recovery in the strongest U.S. job markets, where sales are outpacing new listings and banks have worked through the backlog of foreclosures, Douglas Duncan, Fannie Mae's chief economist, said in an interview.
The unemployment rates have fallen over the past year by more than one percentage point in the Miami, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., areas, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Listings in Washington fell 27 percent from a year earlier in February, while the median price rose 11 percent to $398,500 and homes sold after an average of 74 days on the market, a 20 percent decline, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., a real estate listing service in Rockville, Maryland.
In neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill, sellers are prompting bidding wars by asking less than they expect to receive, said Sean Aalai, an agent with Lindsay Reishman Real Estate.