AMERICA’S 20 HOTTEST REAL ESTATE MARKETS IN MARCH 2017

College students may be flocking to Cancun, Mexico, or Panama City Beach, FL, but a look at preliminary realtor.com® data for March makes it clear that there’s no spring break anywhere on the horizon for the real estate market.

Instead, the buying season’s annual spring jump-start came about a month earlier than usual, with homes expected to hop off the market 22 days faster than last month, or 69 days. That’s eight days faster than last year. And that’s a lot.

“Calendars might say this is the first week of spring, but we’re already right in the thick of the most frenzied spring home-buying season on record,” said Javier Vivas, manager of economic research at realtor.com.

With the ranks of would-be newbie buyers adding to those who have been frustrated in their search so far, for-sale housing inventory in the U.S. has dropped to record low levels.

March continues the sharp double-digit decline observed since October. And although total inventory has increased over last month, it remains substantially lower than one year ago. While nearly 492,000 new listings will enter the market in March, the added inventory continues to fall short of buyer demand.

“While the story keeps revolving around low inventory, prices are now also taking center stage, reaching all-time highs and keeping waves of buyers at bay,” Vivas said.

The median list price has pushed above $250,000, where it has hovered since May 2016. The median list price, now $260,000, is 8% higher than it was one year ago.

The realtor.com economic data team analyzed our data for the country’s largest metropolitan markets to find those where buyers are clicking up a storm on our listings and where homes are speeding off the market like they’re late for a flight to the islands. These markets may seem like a tough nut to crack for buyers, but homes there are likely to be a good investment.

Maintaining its perch atop the ranking for the second month in a row is the San Francisco Bay Area city of Vallejo, followed by San Francisco itself. Mind you, when we talk about these metropolitan markets, they typically include other satellite cities—the San Francisco market encompasses Oakland and Hayward, and No. 3 Dallas includes Fort Worth and Arlington.

New to the top 20 in March were Santa Cruz, CA; Fort Wayne, IN; and Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor in Michigan. Let’s check out the rest!

The hot list